Those in the prairies are questioning the accuracy of recent storm alerts, after some residents in Manitoba were alerted of a storm which was raging hundreds of kilometres away in Saskatchewan. On Aug. 29, Onanole, Man. resident Victoria Espey got a notification while she was playing cards at her family cabin. Issued just after 6 p.m., the notification on Espey’s phone noted there was a tornado in her “mobile coverage area,” at Riding Mountain National Park. “It said that a tornado had touched down in the cell service area, and I was the only one who got it.” she said. “I thought ‘that was weird’, because it was pretty nice outside.” With her curiosity piqued, she contacted Justin Oertel, the owner of The Weather Centre of Manitoba, who provides weather updates online. According to Oertel, the warning was issued for the area south of Melville, Sask., or approximately 250 kilometers from Espey’s cabin. “A warning should mean there’s imminent or occurring severe weather, like where you are standing right now,” he said. “Otherwise, the warning is going to fall on those deaf ears, and it’s not going to get to the people that really need it.” In a statement to CTV News, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) said its meteorologists use “new targeted warnings implemented to issue severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings to people who find themselves within a very specific geographic area.” From there, ECCC sends “alerts and locations” to Pelmorex, a company which operates a system that “allows government agencies to create targeted alerts,” according to director Kurt Eby. “Sometimes you’ll have in rural areas where communications towers serve a much broader distribution, because there’s not as many. In a city, you have two antennas in basically every city block. Out in the country, you can see them, they’re much more spread out,” Eby explained. Saskatchewan storm chaser Craig Boehm says the alerting system can be frustrating and may create warning fatigue. “For everyone else, for a regular day person, they would be getting all these warnings, seeing a storm cloud coming and going and saying, ‘Is this a tornado?’ Boehm said. “When in reality, in that line of storms, that warning was 30, 40, 50, 60 kilometres south or north of them and really no chance of hitting them.” With this year’s storm season winding down, Environment Canada says that it will continue to improve its services over the next year to ensure Canadians have the most accurate weather information when they need it most.
