Hi folks. This is the final post for 2022 and because of this occasion, I’m going to start this off with a year in review of what has happened in the world of Weather Radio. We have one network deciding to stay the course, while the other Netwerk wants to try and change direction, both due to and despite complaints from listeners.

NWR has basically rolled along as normal and this has been the case ever since forever, even with the changing of the voices. I haven’t listened to NWR as much as I probably should this year, but what I have heard sounds much the same as it has since 2016, when Paul came to stay.

Weatheradio Canada had spread i-Notify more throughout Canada and Winnipeg had finally migrated on June 9th and I had commented on that in a previous post, for the newsletter. I don’t know if every single transmitter has been brought over, but I hope so.

Speaking of the newsletter, I had ditched the email list and had shrunk it down, so that only a select few people would get the email blast every three months. This includes those who stream WX radio, work for NWR or ECCC, or one of the big Weather Radio manufacturers and those I had personally selected to keep on the email list. One had made it clear to me that he had possibly read the books of the late Douglas Adams. If you know who he is, my guess is that you have read his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series of books and maybe even listened to the radio series’s throughout the years since 1978. I may do something on the books, but I haven’t figured out how I am going to work any of them into the newsletter, for my break from the main topic, from time to time.

Now, let’s talk about the continuing saga of Weatheradio Canada and the continuing quest to get attention, sometimes for the wrong reasons. On August 19th, there was an announcement stating that 8 stations were set to be decommissioned within six months. Wasn’t the idea to get feedback on whether the local station should be still broadcasting? Having the message come right out and tell us that our station is set to be discontinued within 6 months tells me, that they would rather get the ire of listeners, rather than ask nicely, by actually advertising a survey, complete with a website and questions like in 2018 and 2019. It seems that those who are in a management position have forgotten that there are listeners who rely on the network every day for getting the local weather, so they know what to wear, when to expect any changes and how cold or warm it will be outside. The same listeners may also have no wish to rely on an app, even if internet coverage may be good. Besides, listening to a VHF radio provides a break from digital technology. Yes, apps are good, but we need the radio network around in all of Canada, in case the unthinkable happens and people need to know, whether to wear boots, raincoat, hip waders, sun hat and sunscreen, or whatever the forecast says we need to prepare for when going outside today or tomorrow. More on that in a moment!

About the discontinuation messages in 2020 and 2022, some of us spoke up quite loudly about it, including myself and one other person who has been allowed (buy me) to make his points in this blog, courtesy of a Facebook group we are both in and I co-manage. Despite our best efforts, at least 2 stations were killed off and I don’t know about the other 6 and I hope that they are not going to be snuffed out soon, or any of the other initial 48.

There has been some discussion on the length of the broadcast cycle and Weatheradio Canada has done something about it, by simply dividing by 2, with WXR’s with 6 or 7 regions and selecting 3, thinking that it properly covers the entire listening area. Well, it doesn’t and perhaps a geography lesson should be in hand for those who made this decision, particularly with Toronto. Toronto is obviously one area which should be heard on the broadcast, but selecting the farthest away to the north and west is kinda dumb. Why wasn’t Mississauga and Vaughan selected, instead of Newmarket and Caledon? It is simply stupid and this needs to be rethought, on how to go about tackling this problem.

If anyone wants to defend this move, they could justify it with the seven day forecast. Unfortunately, the extended forecast does not help anyone in planning events for today and tomorrow and not everyone pays attention to the long range forecast anyway. I do, but that’s only me and generally, we all want to know about the next 24 to 48 hours, rather than 7 days from now.

Removing regions from the cycle is not going to fix the problem anyway, for the reason I mentioned above. Hopefully, the short term forecast will come back and I am also hopeful that the entire area will be back on the broadcast as they should be. As I had said in the last post, I hope what is happening is temporary and everything will be alright again, when the short term forecasts come back.

Speaking of the short term forecast, I have heard that they are coming back to the broadcast at some point and I really hope that everything is back to normal, in that all regions within any and all WXR’s listening areas are represented, when the public forecasts are played in either language and corners aren’t being cut. With what is happening now, what management is saying is that you shouldn’t rely on Weatheradio Canada and use WeatherCAN. Besides, radio is an old technology for dinosaurs. Right?

Something else which is going in the wrong direction is the closing down of Environment Canada HQ in Downsview, to CANWARN spotters and the general public, who may wish to be trained in how to spot severe weather. This is obviously a bad move, telling me and others that we are no longer welcome inside the confines of ECCC, unless we actually work there. What skull Duggery could be going on behind closed doors? A secret society?

Speaking for myself, I have expressed my willingness to help out if there needs to be any decisions made as to which voices are appropriate for specific boxes and nobody has asked me anything, except back in 2019. That is why we hear the male voices in either language doing the station ID messages and I am really sorry about that. I should have said the female voices, because they would provide the break from the same voices doing everything else, except for severe weather alerts and the RWT and RMT tests. I still believe that the male voices should be doing the alerts instead of the female, because having a friendly female voice announcing that impending doom is coming, doesn’t sound right. The female voices sound way so full of pep to be used for bringing us possible bad news and the male voices should be the ones used for that purpose, for obvious reasons. After all, the male voice is deeper and could provide the right amount of urgency, where as the female voices are so smooth and relaxed. If I am really as valuable a listener as I have been told, why am I not involved with some of the decision making when it comes to the voices? I have written posts on the voices and I’ve told you how I know what they sound like so, why not talk to me first, as I know all the ins and outs of the voices, including the cadences and any and all idiosyncrasies of how they talk in both languages? After all, I have also said many times that I have them on my iPhone and can tell you right away, whether something works better with the male, or female voice in either language. After all, others who have iPhones may not even care that they have access to the voices, but I do. Also, other people may base their preference on what they here at the time and not what they know the voices can do. I know this for an unspoken fact, from past FB posts about the voices in 2019, when people have said that they don’t like a particular voice, just because and that doesn’t fly with me. I am glad that I know what I know and unfortunately, others aren’t willing to do the homework, as to why they may not like a certain voice, or why they may like others. I’m sorry, but I want to help in more ways than just reporting problems with the network, probably for bragging rights and so I can give an answer, based on what works and not on personal likes and dislikes. By the way, the answer I had given was only supposed to be for testing and shouldn’t have stuck, when i-Notify went live.

Back on July 8th, Rogers went down and I was one of the millions affected by the outage. I had been affected before, but to have no internet or phone, or anything for a significant amount of time, along with not being able to pay for groceries had made this day rather trying. I’m lucky that I had gone somewhere familiar to do what I had to do and I could talk on my ham radio if I wanted to, but that was it. As for getting weather information, Weatheradio Canada was all I had and there was no internet or phone, so all I had was old fashion radio, technology which is still relevant, as long as people of a certain age are still alive. I will be 50 in June and I had been listening to radio since I was 5 or 6 and the same goes with watching TV, which is just another form of radio, but with a screen as part of the set. Remember the days when you could listen to some TV stations at the bottom of the FM broadcast band? How about when you could listen to select channels on radios with a TV option? Those of us who are born in 1990 or earlier should be doing all they can, to keep this technology relevant, instead of trying to decommission stations. Besides, you never know when the next telecom outage could happen and when it does, all Internet will go down and WeatherCAN will be useless.

On a more upbeat note, something else I did back in July and August was include music in the monthly RWT and RMT posts, which had been played on The Weather Network back in the 90s. I like those songs as they are nice tunes and no, I don’t listen to that kind of music regularly. I just find those songs nice to listen to and I will give you one more for this post. It is a song which will make you think of some place warmer than Canada and wher the sun is shining. https://youtu.be/nyRhDfK3FXw

Anyway, I hope we all have a great 2023 and let’s all stay safe, healthy and warm. I hope that spring comes early this year, despite what some forecasters are saying and I’d be happy if we didn’t have winter after December 25th anyway. My apologies to those who like to go skiing, but that’s how I feel about January in February. These are the least two favourite months of the year for me, simply because of the weather outside. No, I do not have Seasonal Affective Disorder and I just plain hate winter. Yes, I was born in Canada, in June. If that doesn’t give a hint of my favourite time of year, I don’t know what will. Anyway, let’s move on with the final reports for 2022.

Here is the SAME Test report for Wednesday December 28th 2022.

KEB98 Buffalo (RWT) 11:00 AM EST.

Required Weekly SAME Test received
Yarmouth, NS
XLW573
162.475
Received at 12:08 pm Atlantic
Wednesday 28 December 2022

Rwt 12 28 22 manchester nh 11 14 am 162.5250 162.400

Toronto (XMJ225 162.400 MHz.) (RWT) 12:02 PM EST, St Catharines VAD 320 (162.475 MHz) (RWT) 12:01 PM EST.

XMJ374 RWT – sent at 12:01PM EST.

Weekly Test Report!
KIG60 162.400MHz Mt. Mansfield VT: 11:03AM
XLR412 162.475MHz Sherbrooke QC*: 12:01PM
XLM300 162.550MHz Montréal QC: 12:02PM
All times are Eastern.

Notes:
-Signal strength was very weak from both Sherbrooke and Mt. Mansfield. 0 to 1 bar on the Midland WR400, from the Mt. Mansfield transmitter. All my long range wx radios got activated nonetheless.

XLF339 Calgary, AB – RWT 12:00 PM MST

*: Save Environment Canada’s weather radio transmitters! XLR412 Sherbrooke QC is among the original 48 transmitters all across Canada that are considered for decommission.

Show your support for your weather radio (and alert!) service! Call or send an e-mail to:
Environment Canada Weatheradio: Call 1-877-789-7733 or E-Mail radio@ec.gc.ca
Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault:
Phone: 613-992-6779 E-Mail: ministre-minister@ec.gc.ca