Environment and Climate Change Canada have launched improvements to its severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings to help people in Canada stay safe during severe weather. The updates are designed to provide clearer, more timely information when dangerous weather develops.
Thunderstorms remain one of Canada’s most frequent hazardous weather types, producing potentially life-threatening lightning, hail, damaging winds, flash floods, and tornadoes.
Canadians rely on this timely information to stay safe in volatile and potentially dangerous weather conditions.
To further improve this service, the Department is enhancing how it warns for convective weather:
- Forecasters can now target the area that they predict will experience the highest impacts and issue severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings to people only in that area. They do this by drawing a shape around the targeted areas. These shapes are called ‘polygons’. These warning polygons are more targeted than the previous broader forecast zones.
- Semi-automated text generation enables forecasters to produce storm information simultaneously in both English and French, allowing convective weather warnings to be issued faster than ever before.
- Multiple warning polygons can be in effect in the same area at the same time, even overlapping one another. This gives forecasters the flexibility they need to track different threats and target safety information accordingly.
“Precise and timely summer storm warnings help keep communities safe when facing dangerous weather, said Julie Dabrusin, Minister of the Environment, Climate Change and Nature.
“Improvements to our alerting system help ensure people in Canada get the weather safety information they need, when they need it.”
Scope of the changes
These changes apply only to severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings. Other weather alerts, such as heat warnings or severe thunderstorm watches, will continue to be issued using pre-determined alert zones.
What this means for mobile alerts
These improvements are expected to reduce the number of Alert Ready notifications mobile users receive. Most importantly, always read weather alerts carefully and follow the safety advice they provide.
Recent improvements: Late last year, the Department introduced colour-coded weather alerts to make weather information easier to understand.
Early storm notification: Earlier this summer, Environment and Climate Change Canada launched Thunderstorm Outlooks to give people in Canada earlier notice of potential storm activity and more time to plan ahead.
What comes next: Over the next year, the Department will continue rolling out initiatives to improve its services and provide Canadians with accurate weather information when they need it most.
For the latest forecasts and severe weather alerts, visit Canada.ca/weather or download the WeatherCAN mobile app, which is available for free on Android and iOS devices.
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