CBC article after the 2007 Elie MB F5

[on_wx]

Snippets

"What's really needed is for some way of emphasizing the tornado potential of a severe thunderstorm watch," said Anderson, who is part of the meteorology department at the University of Manitoba.

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"We tend to be using techniques which are 1970- and 1980-based now, except for what we find on U.S. websites that come to us and have information from over the border. We're kind of playing catch-up all the time," he said.

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Education is also an issue, he said, suggesting staff cuts have left the service scrambling to fill shifts, instead of sending employees on training seminars to learn the latest innovations in forecasting.

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A severe thunderstorm watch had been in effect for most of southern Manitoba since around 1:30 p.m. Friday, but Environment Canada did not issue weather warnings for the Elie area until 6:40 p.m., after a twister touched down in the area.

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"We would love to be able to put out tornado warnings hours and hours in advance, but it's really very, very difficult to do that because they are such a small-scale event, when you think of it," he said.

"Even the tornado that hit Elie was 300 metres wide — well, if you think of southern Manitoba, that's a very, very small area, so it's impossible to be precise about it and where actually that tornado is going to form out of those severe thunderstorms."

Full article:

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...ing-system.html

[on_wx]

In all fairness, the Prairie EC offices have stepped up their game recently issuing storm-based warnings using discussions such as "Environment Canada meteorologists detected a severe thunderstorm capable of producing..."

But then you still have the Ontario office which still issues massive blanket severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings sometimes covering almost all of southern Ontario with warning discussions as "strong to severe thunderstorms over the above mentioned regions may become locally severe producing gusty winds and heavy rain".

I'm not too sure what WFO Toronto's deal is, but imagine severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings being issued by the NWS for half a state saying "strong to severe storm clusters are over the above regions". Nearly all our warnings are false alarms and no one even pays attention to them. One day that decade worth of complacency is going to go somewhere horrible.

[andyhb]

I have a bunch of relatives who live in Manitoba. I fear for them one day, since I believe Winnipeg could possibly be the next major Canadian city to have a strong/violent tornado go through it. Edmonton had 1987, Regina had 1912, Barrie had 1985 (which should be a wake-up call to anyone in the GTA) and Windsor has had a bunch of different events. Winnipeg is overdue. I can only imagine if the Pipestone (that monster wedge with ridiculous multiple vortices captured by Reed Timmer and co.) or the Elie tornado had gone through Winnipeg what the consequences would've been.

Like, imagine this going through a city of 500,000+ people (especially with the subpar warnings of E. Canada and numerous "crying wolf" occasions) or even Toronto...

[Jim Marusak]

In all fairness, the Prairie EC offices have stepped up their game recently issuing storm-based warnings using discussions such as "Environment Canada meteorologists detected a severe thunderstorm capable of producing..."

But then you still have the Ontario office which still issues massive blanket severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings sometimes covering almost all of southern Ontario with warning discussions as "strong to severe thunderstorms over the above mentioned regions may become locally severe producing gusty winds and heavy rain".

I'm not too sure what WFO Toronto's deal is, but imagine severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings being issued by the NWS for half a state saying "strong to severe storm clusters are over the above regions". Nearly all our warnings are false alarms and no one even pays attention to them. One day that decade worth of complacency is going to go somewhere horrible.

last i heard toronto is still off and on between good people and those who are there based on tenure. but yea, winnipeg and edmonton have been doing fairly well in recent history. i know from NWS chat instances that occasionally Winnipeg chats with FGF and BIS on what they're seeing on storms that straddle or cross borders, at least on the phone. i think part of the reason Toronto may have issues is that look at how many offices they'd have to have open lines with and for what regions of Ontario: Duluth (NW Ont/Superior west), Marquette (superior north), Alpena/Gaylord (superior east/Algoma in Ontario as well as the north channel and northern Lake Huron), Detroit/Pontiac (central/SW Ontario/ southern Lake Huron), Cleveland (central-western Lake Erie), Buffalo (niagara/southern Ontario/western Lake Ontario/eastern Lake Erie), Albany (eastern Ontario/thousand islands/eastern Lake Ontario). and remember, they'd most likely have to coordinate with all those offices on Winter Warnings, Snow Squall Warnings, etc as well as summer severe t-storm/tornado warnings. Not exactly an easy task, especially when you have several of the countries biggest Cities/metro areas: the golden horseshoe [metro toronto, including york, durham, halton and peel; hamilton,Niagara Falls]; Ottawa-Carleton-Hull (where you also have to interact with Quebec, and anyone in canada knows that Quebec and Ontario aren't the best of buds outside of maybe EC/MSC), the rapidly growing area near Barrie/Orillia, Greater Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie, Thunder Bay, Windsor, London, Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, and even Kingston (not including the prison). and a bunch of small towns in between that have long-time members in parliment. So it's not as easy as in the priairies to begin with. add to that that you don't know whether you'll get good people or questionable people on shift at a given night, and I would say that's a big task to get right.

[on_wx]

I don't know if Toronto coordinates with the NWS, but I do know they use WeatherTap to monitor US radar. GRLX products cover southern Ontario and you can even add in Ontario roads, counties and cities as shapefiles and placefiles.