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With Storm Day, we looked at the methods we can use as a volunteer organization to help prepare Environment Canada with the data it needs from a local level of amateur weather watchers.
Currently, the weather is collected from many interconnected sources and relies on sophisticated systems to function. If at any point, these systems failed, the methods of collecting data would stop, which would have a negative impact on weather forecasting and the emergency agency’s ability to interpret or analyze the data collected from these sources. To help solve this problem, weather services have embraced the amateur weather watcher at a local level with the CANWARN teams a crossed Canada. These methods create so much of the best local raw data on weather, and it’s not scalable and very time-intensive. For example, the more users share weather station data, the longer it will take to gather the information being transmitted. When all the raw data is collected, it isn’t accessible to other agencies to interpret or analyze the data collected.