Are: Forecaster feeling some pressure

ARE, Sweden — Powerful men hang on her every word and journalists flock to see her. She’s been the center of attention for the past three days at the World Championships and she isn’t even a ski racer.

ARE, Sweden — Powerful men hang on her every word and journalists flock to see her. She’s been the center of attention for the past three days at the World Championships and she isn’t even a ski racer.
    Pia Hultgren has the challenging job of coaxing Mother Nature — or perhaps the Scandinavian snow gods — into behaving for just two weeks so the world’s best skiers can tear down mountains and win gold, please their coaches and thrill the crowds.
    Hultgren is the official weather forecaster for the World Championships, and she’s been dishing out nothing but disappointing news for FIS officials and racers.
    Above-freezing temperatures, wind and snow have made racing conditions unbearable and, well, unsafe. Races were supposed to start Feb. 3. The men’s super G has been postponed twice and the women’s super G once.
    Any reasonable person understands that a weather forecaster’s job is simply to provide information about what is likely to happen. A forecaster can’t change the weather.
    But that doesn’t mean Hultgren doesn’t feel the pressure.
    “I’m doing OK. I’m a competitive person myself, so I understand [the situation],” Hultgren said. “I just do my best and try to focus on the forecast, not myself.”
    Hultgren said Monday morning was “a bit heavy” because race organizers were asking here every half-hour if they should postpone the men’s super G.
    “That’s very hard for me because I can only give them the information, they have to make the decision,” she said.
    Hultgren is straightforward, honest and sincere when she speaks during press conferences and at team captains meetings about the next 24 hours of “easterly winds” or “light snow and colder temperatures.”
    She looks a bit exhausted in the mornings, no doubt staying awake for hours before the lazy Scandinavian sun rises working to get out the latest forecasts.
    “I’m getting about five to six hours of sleep each night. It’s fine,” she said.
    The fit and coal-black-haired Swede was in the Swedish Air Force for 17 years, where she trained and worked in forecasting, and satellite and radar research. She was asked to be the lone point person for the World Championships forecasting because she lives and works in the region and therefore knows its problems better than most in her profession in the Air Force.
    Plus it doesn’t hurt that she is a sportswoman, she said. Hultgren is a runner — she’s done marathons — is a sailor and frequently can be found in the area’s valleys cross-country skiing.
    So how does she unwind during a pressure cooker like this year’s weather-induced slow start at the World Championships?
    “I try to take one hour in the afternoon to run or maybe cross-country ski and that’s just perfect,” she said.