Today is June 1st and if this was a podcast, this would be a bonus episode, as this post is obviously outside the Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter timeline. However, it isn’t and we have an anniversary to talk about so, let’s go with this bonus blog post.
Before I get into the meat of the post I thought I should explain why I am doing this one, 2 months after the last post on i-Notify. The April Fools post was meant to reflect more on the present and the past 6 months since i-Notify had went live to the most populated province in Canada, starting with WXR’s which had been upgraded and then spreading to the rest of Ontario before Christmas. This post will look back from the beginning to today and there will be some opinions, hopes, dreams, wishes, wants and needs in here, but the main theme of this post is looking back from the start of what was supposed to be a complete transformation of Weatheradio Canada, from old technology to the new. By the way, when I say wants and needs, they are not personal and they are needs of the network to flow better and be more interesting for all of us to listen to, in order that we know when we can hear our local 48 hour forecast. We can’t spend up to an hour, waiting to find out if it will be a nice day to go out and play, or a crappy day meant for staying in and hiding under the covers.
On June 1st of 2021, i-Notify first went live as Weatheradio Canada had begun the transformation from the old AVIPAD’s software, to i-Notify. This came a week after a message which was played during the RWT over the entire network on May 26th. The transformation from old to newer technology and voices, was advertised as a gentle reminder, rather than inserting it into the sequence as a public service announcement. From that, I was excited and so were others, because we would Potentially get to hear all four voices as I had described them in a post from August 2018. We eventually heard all 4 voices on the network in Quebec, after a few days of the initial migration. I was able to listen to the stream of the Montréal WXR, via a Weather Radio streaming app. I had heard about the switch from AVIPADs to i-Notify on a Facebook group I co-administrate and when it had been revealed in the post, I immediately went to my phone and the app in question.
My first impressions were initial disappointment, only for the lack of voices that I heard on the broadcast. Don’t forget, that we had known about all 4 voices and I expected more than just a boring and dull broadcast, which is what it currently is now. I have always expressed my opinions as to which voice should do what and when I found out that the male voices were doing all the talking (during the regular cycle) I was not happy. I had emailed Weatheradio Canada, with my June 2nd blog post expressing how I felt and letting them know how I feel in separate emails, about what voices should have been speaking certain things such as the station ID and marine forecast. Which I will get to later on!
On Saturday June 5th, there were severe thunderstorm watches and warnings for parts of Quebec (including Montréal) and only the male voices were doing all of the yacking, including weather alerts. Before then, I had emailed Weatheradio Canada, asking why weren’t the female voices doing any of the talking and I was told that they were supposed to be doing any and all alerts. When I had heard only Tom and Nicolas speaking everything (including the severe weather alerts) I emailed Weatheradio Canada and told them what I had heard. It was eventually taken care of and shortly, we heard all 4 voices on the network, as i-Notify had begun to spread.
On June 15th, it was Atlantic Canada’s turn and it was a more bumpy transition, as with Quebec it just changed without warning and everything on the network was new. When Atlantic Canada began to use i-Notify, it was a different situation, where it went back and forth, between the new and the older AVIPAD’s, with one or two of the bins remaining and as of now, the new station ID plays, complete with the time announcements. At first, the older ID had played and eventually, it was removed, as i-Notify had become more common throughout Atlantic Canada. One of the main problems with i-Notify was a lack of SAME alerts to radios and that was fixed, dew to many emails and phone calls. As of now, things seem to be going well on that front, with SAME and the 1050 Hz tone inside severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, along with the RMT alerts. One of the stranger things about the spread of i-Notify was the inclusion of Chantal doing the French translation of everything for a time, except for the station ID. This was switched back to Nicolas as the French counterpart to Tom (throughout the network by late summer) when Ontario had migrated and I had expressed my feelings on this as well. The response was no specific response except that things will stay as they are at the moment, as they have.
Today, i-Notify covers Weatheradio Canada from coast to coast, but there are some parts of Canada, which have yet to be upgraded and transformed. I’m not so sure about the Yukon, but there are pockets of the Prairies and arctic which have yet to join the party, along with Alberta and Saskatchewan. Ontario had taken their seat on the train, on September 8th, throughout selected parts of the province. The WXR’s selected for migration were those which had been upgraded and even some which were slated to be turned off. This includes, Toronto and Collingwood and both had been upgraded prier to the switch. I had documented how Toronto’s upgrade had gone in November 2019 and Collingwood had been upgraded in one day, as apposed to Toronto and the two days it took for it’s own upgrade, which I had documented here and heard live on air.
One of my main issues is with the station ID and unfortunately, I am partly to blame fir this. For my part, I was asked which voices I think should be doing the ID (back in 2019) and I had suggested Tom and Nicolas. I had no idea that they would become the selected voices for this function on the broadcast and my thought was, that they would only be the ID voices during the testing period. Even with my suggestions in this blog, as to what voices should do what, nobody listened to me and there are some people, who look up to me in the various FB groups and elsewhere. You can imagine how I felt after hearing what I had heard and my hope is that the station ID voices will change and soon. As I had said, the broadcast is rather dull and there is no variety, when it comes to the voice selections for different parts of the broadcast. Right now, the male voices do everything except for alerts and if you are listening to find out what is going on, you need a voice which provides some urgency. The point is not to scare people, but to get listeners to take precautions against severe weather which is imminent or occurring at the moment. You see, Ava and Chantal sound way too relaxed and friendly, where as Tom and Nicolas provide that urgent thrust we need to hear, in order to wake up and get the hell a move on, in order to save your life and those of others too. If the severe thunderstorm warnings on Saturday May 21st didn’t do anything for you, then I am right in saying that the voices for the alerts need to change and right now. We need the male voices for them and the females for something else, which I will get into below.
As for forecasts and weather conditions, that can be interchangeable and I would be happy, with Tom and Nicolas doing any and all forecasts, with Ava and Chantal speaking weather conditions and station ID messages. I would even be happy if they had switched to doing the AQI forecasts too, as there isn’t all that much to them, compared to the public or marine forecasts which consists of a lot of words and phrases. Or, get rid of the Air quality index forecast entirely from the broadcast, in order to shorten the cycle, along with only letting the extended forecasts play for an entire region and not for any and all sub-regions. If people wish to get the 7 DAY forecasts, that is where WeatherCAN comes in handy and believe me when I tell you, people really want to hear the 48 hour forecasts the most, out of anything to do with the public forecast. Besides, the extended forecasts are repeated too many times and this could be the reason why the order of the forecasts is no longer consistent and it should be, so people know when to listen and what to listen for, so they know that their forecast is coming up in either English or French.
As for the voices, I have had enough of complaints and complaining about the French voices because I know how bad they are. I’m used to all of the voices because I have them on my iPhone and I also sleep with my WX radio on at night. I don’t like the French voices all that much either, but these are the voices which were licensed to Weatheradio Canada and that’s what we get. It’s a shame that other voices weren’t allowed to be used, because they have more expression than Tom or Ava at times. For example: Samantha would have been good, or even a British voice like Daniel would’ve provided a change. However, we are stuck with the voices we were given so, let’s learn to live with them, like we are learning to live with Covid.
As for what will happen with i-Notify in the future, I don’t know and nobody from Weatheradio Canada has come forward with any groundbreaking news, as to any changes and The voice selection and whether I approve, or disapprove of them. I’ve always said, my doors always open if they need help with selecting which voice performs certain functions on the broadcast. However, even I as a long time old reliable listener am not immune to being shut out of decision making and unfortunately, the great unwashed(majority) get the final say, as opposed to someone who knows what sounds best for a particular box. Everything is all in one basket and their needs to be a shake-up in the cycle, in order to make the broadcast more interesting. By which I mean that there needs to be more variety in what voices are selected to speak certain things and not a change in the order of the forecast all the time, as there needs to be consistency, in what we hear and when we hear it. At this point, the voices are consistent but not the order of the public and marine forecasts an this has to change quickly, so that more people who are listening, will get a general idea of when what they are listening for is coming up soon (i-e) the local forecasts.
In closing, I hope that any changes which are slated to happen with i-Notify, will happen quickly. Also, I hope that those of us who are active listeners will get a heads up, as to what and when any changes will happen. Personally, I hope that I am the first, as I email Weatheradio Canada every week with my RWT and RMT reports for two WXRs which I can hear. I also wouldn’t mind having a say, as to any of the changes as well, as I know all 4 voices like the back of my hand. All that would need to be done, is to give me the text of what ever could be selected to have a change in voice, or even the phraseology involved. For example: a change in the station ID and maybe even a mention of WeatherCAN or providing an email Address, for those who wish to provide comments to Weatheradio Canada, outside of calling a voicemail. I have an email address which I fire off all sorts of comments, questions and reports every week, but others may not. Not everyone is comfortable talking on the phone and they may wish to communicate by text. At this point, there is no Weatheradio Canada accout on Twitter or Facebook, but there are groups and my own Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter FB and Twitter accounts. I don’t wish to receive complaints because I am a listener like you, but I also volunteer and help out Weatheradio Canada when I can. I also sport my jacket in the spring and fall proudly, which I was given in 2014 and of course, I try to promote the service as best I can. Anyway, I am glad that i-Notify is here and I believe that at some point, things will get better and we will hopefully be shocked and pleasantly surprised at what we will hear in the coming months to a year. I have hopes, but I also know that there are those who are not so optimistic and I hope that those minds can be changed. This new software is providing a golden opportunity to show listeners who were around before AVIPADs, that Weatheradio Canada used to be much like NWR is now, but with humans reading out the text on tape. Now that we have text to speech, things can only get better, if they want to make it so. Well, do they?
As you know from the last issue in February, I had asked those of you on the email list to start either subscribing, or following the blog, depending on the verbiage unfortunately, some people have had trouble doing that. I have either sent out invitations, or they have managed to follow the blog on their own. Here is one person’s experience with it and they are using a computer.
If you are using a desktop computer, at the foot of the blog page, in the lower right-hand corner, is an icon marked “Follow”. When you click on this icon, you would presumably be able to set up a subscription. The icon does not, admittedly, SAY “Subscribe”, but instead says “Follow”. For some reason the mobile site says “subscribe” and there is no link to do so. There for, I had to invite some people and they had obliged. Hopefully, you can subscribe or follow and by November it will be purely a blog, without an email list with some exemptions.
Anyway, it’s me and the masks are off for the most part, as we’re getting out more and here comes the Covid. So far, I’ve been untouched (as far as I know), but some of my friends have had Covid as early as the holiday season.
This issue will have some more older posts which were leftovers from outside the timeline and the same with the next issue in August. For example: the old post in this issue will be about batteries and in August, it will be about alerting and my own opinions on how long WX radios should be playing after alerts.
Anyway, let’s get on with the rest of this issue and let’s all stay safe, especially as there will be a provincial election in Ontario… on my birthday.
If you live in Canada and you have the WeatherCAN app, this update on April 25th is important, to those who are sensitive to Air quality in particular, the presence of ground level ozone and smog.
:set custom Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) notifications in a few simple steps! Set notifications for your unique risk level, depending on your sensitivity to air pollution. Our app will alert you when your chosen AQHI value is reached, so you can take steps to protect yourself and those in your care from the effects of air pollution.”
Batteries Hath Sprung A Leak?
Back in 2016, a friend on Facebook had posted about their Weather Radio being destroyed by leaky batteries, which have corroded and thus decided to leak its contents into the casing of the radio. I should also mention it was a portable model too. My guess was that he had non- rechargeable batteries in the radio for a while and I guess they must have become corrosive and thus, destroyed the unit. He had corrected me, as he had used The battery pack, which came with the radio. I will have more to say about that later on! I have always used rechargeable batteries in all my portable radios, whether they are two way or receiver models. Maybe that’s just me but I’ve also had experience with leaky batteries in another portable device, thanks to my older sister’s carelessness. It must have done something to disable use of the tape player and so, I had to go all summer Of 1984, without my music in stereo. I have since purchased 2 of the albums I had at that time on iTunes and now I can enjoy them as they were meant to be heard. I digress. This is what I recommend if you experience what my friend has recently gone through. Get another of the same model and try not to use the non-rechargeable batteries or the battery pack, if it comes with it this time. Buy 3 four packs of Maha Powerex nickel metal hydride cells. If it is the model I am thinking of, it takes 3 aa cells and you will have 12 of them for your use. They also come in their own plastic transportable case, so you can keep better track of them. Next, buy a battery charger, preferably a Maha charger. I forget the model and the link in the older post no longer works, but I can tell you that there are chargers which have more than one charging option. You can charge up to 4 cells with some of them and you can either charge the cells fast or slow. I recommend slow because it will help with preserving the life of the cells. The same thing applies to the current crop of iPhones and the battery chargers, namely the 20 W brick which is available for all iPhone 12s and 13 models with a USB-C cable.
Also, if you have questions on how NIMH batteries actually work, you can probably do a search on Youtube and there are bound to be videos on how these battery’s work and Wyatt’s best, to charge them slowly and only use fast charging, when it’s critical. I certainly learned a lot of important information, most of which I couldn’t use but I learned that charging the cells once a month, whether they need it or not is actually better for them, then leaving them alone and assuming that they will hold the charge and work when you need to use them. I recharge all my cells once a month and it is actually about that time of the month to do so. I hope this helps if you ever have the same problem. If you have questions, just ask and I’ll try to answer them in a timely manner.
WR 120 Tips
In the past, I had done my own review of the WR120 and here are some Youtube videos on how to reset it, among other things. https://youtu.be/GOhsPWpH7e0
In this age of social media and weather applications on our Smart phones, we still need WX radios. Yes, I know that in Canada you may hear a lot of French where you speak English. Also, the new software needs to be further refined, but these radio will save our lives, more reliably than our Smart phones. It doesn’t matter how much Wi-Fi we have, or how good our Internet connection is at the present time. We still need not just ham radio, but WX radios and here’s why. https://youtu.be/24vf6oENTrI
THE WATCHDOG REPORT If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call 1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA at nwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call 1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team at ec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook Group. https://m.facebook.com/groups/weatheradio/
You can also email me directly at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com and it will be passed on for you. Or, you can tweet to the Weather Radio Listeners newsletter on Twitter, by following me @WxrNewsletter. Note from the author: I will mainly include items with a definitive time on their start to finish and ones with unknown starts or endings, I will of course include as well, but with a mention of them being unknown.
On Sunday February 20th, Toronto XMJ 225 didn’t actually go off the air, but it became stuck. It had stopped updating after the 3:00 AM marine forecast until later the same day (all be it slowly). Much the same problem had occurred on Monday February 21st, with an email and the eventual loading of data, as apposed to playing stale information, without any hourly reports. The difference is that the duration of the problem was a few hours shorter, as it had occurred later in the day and the email was sent out on time, so that the evening forecast would be playing after 6:00 PM, with the marine forecast coming on at the usual time. This also happened on Monday February 28th and this time, all of Ontario was affected and it wasn’t resolved until some time March 1st.
On Thursday February 24th, Winnipeg XLM-538 was discovered to be in watchdog, but there has been no indication as to when, or if any other WXR’s have also gone down. However, it did come back on the same day, after an email was sent out about it. On Monday February 28th the same thing had happened again with Toronto XMJ 225 and it wasn’t restored fully until all current data had loaded. This had also occurred throughout the rest of Ontario and thus it took longer to restore everything. On Tuesday March 29th, St Catharines VAD 320 had been moved, from where it had been for many years. I had received an email reply to my own email about this subject on March 30th and here are the main points. Indeed, the Niagara Weatheradio broadcast was moved yesterday from its long-standing location in Thorold, to a tower within the city limits of Niagara Falls proper. Same call sign, power, and frequency. On Saturday April 9th at 3:04 AM CDT, Winnipeg XLM 538 had gone into watchdog and wasn’t restored until Monday April 11th at 9:03 AM CDT, after a winter storm watch had gone through from 5 hours previous. It had gone down on or before April 25th and came back on April 26th. Note: Winnipeg is still on AVIPADs!
A question for those who live in areas where Weatheradio Canada hasn’t been upgraded from AVIPADs to i-Notify. If you are not in favour of the upgrade (even with outages) why? Is it because of the voices and how bad some of them are? Is it because you are used to AVIPADs and don’t want things to change?
I know how bad the French voices are, but I also know that The possibilities are endless with the new software and the text to speech technology. For example: when alerts are issued we are starting to hear more than just the mention of where the alert is and what the watch, advisory or warning is for. It’s not enough, but it’s a start and they are using the wrong voice for it, but this is new and we can’t expect it to be perfect from the get-go. When we were born, we were by no means fully developed into who we are now and we need to give the new software time to mature, before it was brought in. Yes, it was rushed and the plans had changed from what was originally supposed to happen, but you can blame that on the pandemic. the idea was to have i-Notify go live all across Canada at the same time, but the lockdowns and travel restrictions screwed everything up and now, we have select areas without the new voices and there is no need to get into that again.
As for the text to speech, there are no words and fraises to purchase in order for the information to go out over our radios and it can all be typed in. Plus, the voices are widely available to those of us with Apple devices and I’m sure that if you do a search on Youtube, you can find any of the four voices being demonstrated in a video.
Anyway, I believe that we all should be on the same page and the fact that some WXR’s aren’t upgraded is concerning. If outages don’t bother you, do you really put Weatheradio Canada at the top of your priority list, when it comes to getting severe weather alerts and updates? I still do, along with WeatherCAN and any emails I receive from Environment Canada, as I prefer redundancy, over nothing at all in any type of weather emergency.
“Back in the 90’s and 2000’s when AVIPADS was first implemented, information was actually given about the event. Unfortunately as time went on, Weatheradio Canada became more and more of a shell of its former self. INOTIFY was a good idea on paper but the implementation was entirely screwed over and it wasn’t properly tested before going live.”
I agree about i-Notify, as it should have been the Game changer, where we could have more information about alerts and not just generic instructions. Hopefully someone in management sees this and will finally do something, to make it better. Or else, a bunch of people may decide to turn off their WX radios. Here is someone else who has also commented a lot (as of late) and I thought I would share them here, as these are comments on the FB post above in the NOAA Weather Radio and Weatheradio Canada group.
“Weatheradio Canada has always been on my top priority. Yes, I agree that more redundancies are always better, even more so in climate change where weather events get wilder and wilder, meaning the underlying infrastructures are more likey to fail. So redundancy is capital here.”
“Where I somewhat disagree, weatherradio Canada isn’t just a redundant source of infos, it has a very unique feature: LIVE ALERTS and it works unattended: You don’t have to actively listen to the radio, nor even be nearby, as its LOUD siren will get heard anywhere in the house like a smoke detector… and like a smoke detector to warn you about a potentially life threatening event that needs your IMMEDIATE attention. For that reason alone, weather radios have earned their relevance.”
“As for someone who has lived through the outage of the transmitter at the height of summer weather events, I knew bitterly well the consequences of NOT receiving weather alert in real time.”
“I strongly get the negative impression from Environment Canada that they consider their weatherradio service just like their phone service: Just a way to disseminate weather infos, and probably that’s why they consider some of their transmitters “redundant” and therefore being on the chopping block.”
“Weatheradio Canada is first and foremost AN ALERT SYSTEM ! If they have understood that, they wouldn’t even consider to decommission weather radios in the first place!”
“Even more so in large areas like Toronto or in my neck of the woods, Southern Québec that are on the chopping block: You want to alert people when a life threatening weather event is heading their way! The more people you reach IN REAL TIME, the better! So it makes no sense to decommission these transmitters!”
“And yes, when there’s no weather events happening, yes it does double duty, to disseminate weather infos…. and there goes i-Notify with all of its problems… and redundancies. :)”
“What I’m hoping for: 1) the network of Weatherradio transmitters stays intact and even gets expanded!
2) That they also expand the use of SAME events. They still using the same subsets of SAME events as they were originally designed 20 years ago!
3) I’m thinking about “decluttering” for example WSW (Winter Storm Warning) which is currently a “catch all” for just about any weather event happening in winter time. Several SAME event codes have been added. Use them! Contrary to the discontinued use of the “egg timer” 1050Hz tone, using these newer SAME codes have little impact on older SAME radios: They’ll continue to alert, -so the basic requirement of a weather radio is still met– and can even guess correctly most of the time whether it’s a watch or a warning!
An example of a SAME event code that has beend added is SQW, Snow Squall Warning. The Americans use it, but here in Canada it gets alerted as a Winter Storm warning! I even showed an example in this group a while ago, where for the same weather event affecting both sides of the border at the same time, my weather radios tuned to the Mount Mansfield transmitter in Vermont displayed “Snow Squall Warning” while my other weather radios tuned to the Montréal transmitter displayed “Winter Storm Warning”.
In my neck of the woods which I live in a flood prone zone, I dearly love to see FLOOD Watch and Warning being used. Sadly, politics got involved here, thinking that it’s NOT up to them whether flooding is occuring… so they issue a “rainfall warning” which is NOT alerted (since there’s no SAME code for that) and ironically they warn people about ahem… flooding everytime they issue that warning. 🙂 Use the SAME code for FLOOD warning, so their “rainfall warning” gets alerted on our radios, they really don’t have to dig deeper than that.
Since i-Notify is a true speech engine, therefore it’s long overdue to rethink about SAME codes. It’s an ALERT SYSTEM, so it might be times to bring her up to the 2020s! 🙂
5) Please, pretty please: No more 4AM Warning for weather events that will happen a day later! On the US side, their NWR radios have established a curfew during the night. Only when something is currently happening, it gets alerted. For everything else, it will wait for the next morning… and at a decent time. 🙂
I think that EC’s 4AM alerts are a MAJOR irritant, enough to intice people to turn off their radio for good.
These types of “long haul” alerts are so numerous and frankly shouldn’t be alerted at all at such an early hour. They should take example on the Americans for a curfew during the night.
6) This one will have to get politicans involved (read: Extremely unlikely that it’s going to happen), but I truely believe that EC’s weatherradio service should operate under a CRTC license, just like the American NWR weather radios are opering under a FCC license. Even their used or discontinued use of SAME event codes must get the approval of the FCC!
So I would like EC’s broadcasting license to be renewed at regular intervals, just like any broadcaster on the AM and FM band, and just like with any broadcaster, EC’s performance shall be reviewed by the CRTC panel, so EC can be held accountable! So the CRTC can order corrective actions to be taken, when they are not compliant.
If this were happening, somehow I’ve a feeling that suddenly I-Notify would improve tremendously and it would have been brought up to a standard that Canadians deserve and expect to.”
“Actually, it’s a don’t care don’t bother us policy. I might be tempted to add: Best effort too, (read: operating on a shoestring budget)”
“EC is currently operating under Industry Canada’s license and their main focus is on the technical side of the spectrum they use and less on the content being broadcasted.”
Okay, I have something to say to both Weatheradio Canada and its casual Listeners, who only listen when an alert is issued. To Weatheradio Canada, please do a Survey on who listens and how often they listen, as well as how they get their alerts. In fact, I recommend emailing those who have been in constant contact with EC, including those of us who are CANWARN net controllers and CANWARN Coordinators first, as most of us listen to the broadcast on a semi-regular basis. Also, don’t forget about those who email you every week, to report when the RWT and RMT has gone off in our local area. What about those of us who also help to manage WX radio streaming sites, with some of the WXRs on them? These are the people who should be top priority, when it comes to finding out the five double use of when we listen, how often we listen, where we listen, who listens, what we listen for and a a bonus, how we receive WX alerts. Speaking for myself, I listen to the broadcast when I sleep and I also use WeatherCAN as an equal source of weather information and getting weather alerts, pushed to my phone.
To those who are listening and to those who complain, first of all, stop complaining just to me. I have contact with Weatheradio Canada, but I am noticing that those who are moaning and whining the loudest, are those who have regular contact with environment Canada and there for, can bitch to them about their problems with Weatheradio Canada and they can have their complaints forwarded to someone at Weatheradio Canada. I’ve done my complaining and if they won’t listen to me (a long time listener who is regularly reporting outages and alert tests) why would they listen to you? However, I have something which nobody else who has been crying has. I have access to all of the voices used by Weatheradio Canada for i-Notify and actually, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, you do too, but you may not be blind or even care less that you have them and choose to be ignorant, of the fact that you have the same voices which go out over VHF in Canada.
Also, for those who have complained to both myself and on a particular FB group, how much do you actually listen to Weatheradio Canada? All 3 of us are CANWARN members and some of us had the blackberries, which were given to net controllers by Environment Canada. I never did, so I get the emails and as a back-up I also have alerts pushed to my phone from WeatherCAN and other apps.
For those who actually believe that only French is on Weatheradio Canada in Toronto, I suggest taking an hour out of your day, to listen to the entire English and French configuration and then, tell me on my FB group that you only hear French. I also suggest relearning French if you have forgotten it and yes, I know that the French voices are bad, but if you have some way of learning the nuances of the speech, I recommend listening to both the English and French translations from the EC website, from the public text bulletins for Southern Ontario. Most of the time, it starts off in Toronto, depending on whether the forecasts have been revised or not and you will notice that the broadcast on Weatheradio Canada in Ontario (no matter the language) is quite long, dew to how specific the forecast is for each region and sub-region these days. It had started in the winter of 2020 and for the most part, this has continued to today, with some exceptions where the forecast has been less complicated with everything being the same over a specific region. If you have an iPhone or an iPad, I suggest using that to listen to the forecasts for all of Southern Ontario in both English and French and maybe, you will understand that listening more than occasionally, is paramount to understanding what you hear, coming out of a speaker, of a WX radio, or your 2 meters ham radio or scanner.
Because of the long cycle on Toronto XMJ 225, I had decided to listen to St Catharines VAD 320 because it is shorter and I can hear it quite well, on either my scanner or my Sangean CL-100 WX radio and, don’t forget that you get the time announcement at the end of the station ID too. So, why do some people wish to stay on AVIPADs?
If Toronto XMJ 225 goes back to AVIPADs, because of a minority who are complaining, I will stop listening to it and switch to VAD 320 and ask that Toronto be decommissioned as soon as possible. If you are going to complain (for the sake of complaining) and not take the time to listen to a complete cycle beforehand, then maybe you shouldn’t have a local Weatheradio Canada station in your area. I’m disappointed especially because the complaints have come from people who should know better, because they have been CANWARN net controllers and CANWARN Coordinators and I know that one of them has WeatherCAN on their phone. If it’s a case of being busy, we are all busy and it’s a matter of time management and we should all have some idea, when to listen to our radios, when a new forecast is issued. For example: in Southern Ontario forecasts are issued normally at) 5:00 AM, 11:00 AM and 3:30 PM. There used to be one at 9:30 PM, but that has been discontinued years ago and I wish it could be brought back.
One thing where i-Notify does need a tweak is when alerts are sent out to Weatheradio Canada, the broadcast is interrupted, but when the alert message ends it goes back to where it left off so people can hear what the alert is. Unfortunately, SAME talks over the initial message and not everybody has the time to look at WeatherCAN, as soon as they hear that an alert has been issued. I do, because I have my phone on me at all times, but not everyone else does. So, I hope that before the summer severe weather season gets underway, this can be looked at and changed asap. Personally, I don’t care all that much, but others don’t want to look at their phones and because of how i-Notify works now, it seems that the idea is to only disseminate information and not to save lives, first and foremost. Hopefully, this can change because there are plenty of ham radio operators who are CANWARN net controllers and Coordinators who also listen to Weatheradio Canada and probably have WeatherCAN, but who may not always be in an area with good internet or Cellular coverage. That may also affect how quickly alerts are being pushed to their phones and I happen to be lucky to live in a good area, but others may not be so lucky. Hopefully everything is considered by the time the first severe thunderstorm watches and warnings are issued, starting summer severe weather season.
Okay, I think I’ve said enough and I want to end this on a high note. Some of you know that I like to travel on the bus and now that Greyhound Canada is no longer with us, I have Limited options, as to how I can go from point A to point B. So, I thought I would look back on Greyhound with this video of somebody on an older bus, going somewhere. They may not have a WX radio on them, but they are probably sitting at the back of the bus, which is my favourite place, so I could hear the rev and idle of the engine clearly. Something else I should mention about the video is that on the older buses, there is guaranteed to be a bar beside the window, which is meant for emergencies and in the event of an emergency, you lift the bar and the window pushes open. Normally you can’t open windows on Motor coaches, for various reasons. Do you want to know why? All right! https://youtu.be/8aMJYwKXxP0
By the way, I would use that bar to mount a handheld radio in order to listen to it, or in the case of my HT, to talk on it while tooling down the highway. I actually forgot my WX radio on the bus once and thankfully, the driver was nice enough to find it and bring it to me! Anyway, let’s all stay safe and enjoy the video. https://youtu.be/zePC-A-Lxdg
This is from the latest post and I had decided to extract it, because what I’m talking about will not only give us another option with getting the latest weather forecasts, conditions and alerts. It will also give all of us an idea of what i-Notify sounds like on Weatheradio Canada, for those who don’t have it as yet. I encourage you to call both numbers below and give it a try. Now, on with the rest of this post.
For many years we have been able to get our local weather on the phone, as a recording or a 1 (900) number gave those who wanted to, a chance to talk to a meteorologist. For those who wanted to get even more recorded weather information on the phone, there was a service in Ontario called Weather Menu, which also had a 1(900) number and it was addictive. Thankfully, I had my addiction to it under control and I didn’t call it all that much, unless I really wanted to know about any severe weather I had heard of happening via any severe weather bulletins I had heard on Weatheradio Canada.
Now, there is no need, because of all manner of apps and websites for us to stay up to date on the latest weather in our area. However, for those of us who simply wished to call a number, Canadians had to call specific numbers in order to hear the local forecast and as the author of the newsletter blog, I’ve called all of them and I have even used them as a guide to figure out where problems with Weatheradio Canada could be occurring. Sadly, not every region is represented and this goes for some key areas in Ontario, such as cottage country and the far north of the province, which has no Weatheradio Canada coverage. In my own case, I was toldd to call all of the numbers back in 2013, in order to check on each option in both languages and write it down. If I didn’t have unlimited Canadian calling, it would have been a really large bill. It wasn’t, but it took a week to go through everything and it gave me a new appreciation for having weather on the phone. After all, it did replace Weatheradio Canada when I couldn’t listen to it anymore on TV.
The specific numbers are all in the past, as we can now say HelloWeather, with 2 numbers to call. We can now get the information in and around our local area, along with just about anywhere else across Canada. I have used it and I am very happy with what I have been able to do and if you give it a couple of minutes in order to learn how it works, you will be taken with it too.
The phone numbers are: 1 (833) 794-3556 or 1 (833) 586-3836. There are two numbers because they each Put the main focus on either English or French, depending on which phone number you call. However, you can hear either language if you call either number by pressing one on the telephone keypad when prompted. You can even hear marine forecasts and I for one have been waiting for this since about 2008 or so, when I had first heard about the possibility of a one 800 number being created, as a national number as opposed to a bunch of numbers for specific cities and areas.
Give those two numbers a try today and sure, it’s another option for those who may not have a computer or a smart phone, but I think that you will agree that getting your weather by calling a number is just as helpful as hearing it over a VHF radio, reading the text on the website or an app, or hearing about it on radio and TV. By the way, there will be a website, or a link to it somewhere on the EccC website, talking about it better than I can. It’s not ready yet and I will hopefully have a link to it in a future Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter blog post.
Earlier I had mentioned i-Notify and this also figures into the new phone numbers, because these are the voices which are now heard on Weatheradio Canada (from this point forward). Some stations are on the old AVIPADs software, but they will be transformed before the end of 2021, barring anything holding things up. If you want to hear about HelloWeather from the source, check out this link. https://youtu.be/f6lz_gfzM7Y
Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter for November 1st 2021 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada.html Hello and welcome to the third and final issue of the newsletter for 2021. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the newsletter and what I’m going to do (over the next 12 months) is to go back and reflect on how the newsletter had started and has progressed to this day. I will insert some old articles and update some of them, as they are now out of date and in need of either an update, or expansion. I will also look back on how I would occasionally deviate from the main topic and talk about things which interest me, such as my favourite TV shows, comedians and groups. I will continue to do that and I have one coming up in this issue, because it’s the band in question’s 50th anniversary this year. I’ll give you a hint, in that they had a biopic in 2018, named after one of their signature songs. I have more coming up and of course, I will talk about why I like to do this, sometimes.
I will be looking back on the newsletter and how it has evolved, both with streamlining and expanding this periodical. I’ll get to that later on, but for now let’s look back on before the newsletter came to be and how it had started. I will also have some new material about i-Notify, as it has marched into Ontario and westward.
The following is how I got into Weather Radio and how the newsletter came to be. It all started way back in 1988, when I was 14 years old and living with my parents in Toronto Ontario, in the borough of East York. To give you an idea of where I was at back then, I was in grade 8 and plugging along, with my studies. I was also into music, as I still am and my favourite band back then was Def Leppard and they were riding high with their fourth and best selling album Hysteria. I still like Def Leppard, as well as the album Hysteria and their previous album Pyromania. I listened to mostly hard rock and heavy metal and those are my favourite genres of music, which I am happy to talk about with anyone who feels the same as me, about bands with loud guitars and either howling, or growling lead vocalists. After all, I do appreciate bands like Tool, Metallica and Slipknot as well.
When I first discovered Weatheradio Canada, I was serfing the TV channels, looking for something to watch. Note: blind people say “”watch” when referring to television, because it sounds better than saying that I listened to an episode of The Simpsons on TV. Sure, I hear the dialogue and music and may not know what’s going on on the screen, but I have an idea so I’m not totally left out. Anyway, I digress. I accidentally found a channel with continuous weather information and it seemed to be coming from the Toronto Weather Office. This was a few months prier to the launch of The Weather Network, formerly known back then as Weather Now on Cable TV. I found out years later, what I had actually found was a channel which displayed a radar site just north of Toronto in a town called King city Ontario. That explains why the signal wasn’t consistent, with it being excellent on some days and on other days, fair to sometimes nearly unintelligible.I became a fan and learned that this was Weatheradio Canada Station XMJ225 in Toronto and it was actually broadcasting on a VHF frequency of 162.400 MHz. This was also before I knew what: VHF, HF or UHF even was. This was new for me and I had no idea that it would lead me to becoming a Ham Radio operator 21 years later. I also realized that the voices I heard reading out weather information, were the same ones I heard on such radio stations as CJCL 1430 and CFRB. Remember in the last issue I had mentioned Environment Canada meteorologists on the radio, talking about the weather for the day and five days into the future? Back then, I had no WX radio and relied on listening to radio stations playing music which I didn’t like all that much. However, I did get to hear the weather forecasts delivered by the same people, who would also speak on Weatheradio Canada. Even in 1992, my favourite rock station in St Catharines had an Environment Canada meteorologist on the air, to talk about the lack of a summer that year, but that was rare. The world had gone through an El Niño the previous winter and it had continued, for a while longer. Of course, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo didn’t help either, as it had cooled down the worlds temperatures in 1991, thanks to a bunch of ash and rock spewing out of the volcano. For the record, it was Mike Palethorpe who had kindly spoken to 97.7 HTZFM back in 1992 and I hope I spelled his name correctly. Anyway, I digress once again.
In 1991, the channel I had monitored went off the air during that summer and I had no other way besides the telephone to get my weather. The other option was The Weather Network but it wasn’t what I wanted. Despite this I would sleep with it on because of the music that would play through the local forecasts, when people weren’t talking. Fast faorward to 2000, I had discovered that a service called Talking Yello Pages had the weather from Environment Canada on it and I was hooked again. This time, I was determined to eventually get a Weather Radio of my own. I did on February 7th 2001. It was a piece of junk and it paled in comparison to my later receivers. It was an AM/ FM receiver with 3 WX channels. It also took 3 aaa batteries and there was no AC jack for power. To top it off, the reception of my own local WXR was worse than bad. In fact, it was atrocious and I had to put the radio in a certain place in my apartment and I had to extend the telescopic antenna all the way to hear it. In 2002, I upgraded to a much better desktop model from Radio Shack. It had a tone alert feature and was much more reliable than the previous model. The only problem was that it was a desktop and not a portable unit. I would have liked to have bought something to take with me while traveling. That came in the form of the ESP2100 from Eton and it was my first SAME radio, before I knew what Specific Area Message Encoding even was. I had purchased it in 2004 and it was great, but there was still something lacking, such as the ability to get weather alerts on Weatheradio Canada. Even when SAME was introduced, I had no idea how it worked or even how the event and location codes worked. In 2005, I had purchased my first crank radio from Eton, the FR300. That was fine but again, there was no AC power plug for it. All though, I finally purchased an adapter in 2008, which was suitable for this model. In 2006, I had bought a handheld Marine transceiver from Cobra, the MRHH100VP and I was just happy with it. I was able to weather dx a bit but the only thing was that the audio was distorted but not so much that I couldn’t hear what was being said. In 2007, I had finally purchased a SAME radio which actually had everything I wanted, which was the Oregon Scientific W-R108, now the W-R602. I loved it but it had a clock and calendar, which required site in order to be able to change said options. I also liked that it had a feature on it where I could set it to change channels on its own, when one channel became too week, while traveling. My next model was the W-R300 from Midland and this was a perfect unit for me. It had a siren that went off when an alert was issued and it also had an AM/ FM radio which I could use. It also had a clock and calendar, but I could actually figure out how to set both of the settings to the correct time and date, because I was basically walked through each setting on the radio, as the manual did not do the settings in the order of how they would appear with the menu layout. This is still with me to this day. Then, came the Midland HH54VP in 2010 and this is exactly what I needed out of a handheld WX radio. It had the siren that went off when a SAME alert is issued like the W-R300 and it also had the Home/ Travel feature of the W-R602. This is the model I take wen I go out of town on long trips and it has been reliable to this day. Since 2008 I had also purchased a few handheld scanners which also have the Weather Radio on them. My 2 favourites are: BC246T and the BC346XT. I like them because I can not only use them as scanners but I can also use them as Weather Radios and they also have been a big help to me, when I needed them. I also purchased 2 more desktop WX radios to round out my collection. They are: Midland W-R120 and the Sangean CL-100. The latter is also a great AM and FM radio, with great sound and a very good FM receiver. I listen to my favourite rock station, which is in St Catharines Ontario and it comes in full quieting. Another WX radio I had purchased in August 2015 was the PRD9W, which is another portable unit, with an AM and FM receiver. It is equally as strong as the CL-100 and it is easy to use. The latest WX radio I had purchased is the Midland EH54 in January 2017 and I will never forget that day, or that weekend for that matter. I won’t get into why, except to say that my body didn’t take kindly to what I had eaten that day I had purchased the unit. Basically, I had gone through a period of food poisoning and combined that with pests in my apartment, made life rather difficult at the time. Basically, I am all up-to-date, with my radios and as far as any newer models, I don’t know if I will purchase anything else at the moment. After all, we are still in the midst of the pandemic and I’m not ready to order online, other than doing grocery shopping, along with items I can set up by myself and which do not require a manual. I also need to be able to operate the radio sufficiently. Need I say more? Now to get to how the newsletter was born; In 2011 I started searching for some sort of newsletter that was all about Weather Radio but the only one I had found up to that point was the NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio Newsletter. I had enquired about it and I was told that there were no mailing lists for it. I had also offered my own idea’s and they were received warmly. I was also recommended to take what I had been thinking and put it into action, possibly creating my own newsletter. That August I had sent out an email to friends of mine, who are in a Ham Radio group I was and still am in, pitching the idea of creating the newsletter. I had some responses but I also did some traveling north of Toronto to do some pitching and more people came forward and said they would like to join. In November 2011 a friend of mine had put together a webpage for me, which is partly for my Ham radio interests but was also at the time, for the newsletter. Some of the issues are there but all of them are in order and not in attachments, for those who had received the PDF’s through the email list . This website has replaced the original from 2011 with all issues here since 2017. It took a few late nights and hurting my thumb, but it was worth it. Basically, I had to manually edit the text from the PDF of each issue and in some cases, some passages had some doubling of letters in the text, which had to be corrected. To make a long story short, everything was updated by March 22nd 2017 with all issues of the newsletter on the website and since then, I have published each issue as a blog post ever since. Then, in May 2018 the blog became the only place to get the newsletter and it has been this way, to the present day.
One thing you may know (if you have been with the newsletter for a long time) is that it has been composed on multiple devices, from computers to all manner of Smart phones. In fact, the first two issues were composed on an old Nokia 6682 Smart phone, which was much more primitive and didn’t have much latitude, when it comes to how I compose the newsletter blogs now. For example: there was no copy and paste function, no spellcheck and to make things even worse, I wasn’t and I’m still not a great speller to begin with. In fact, I use dictation most of the time, when I’m trying to spell words which I have difficulty with, by using them in a sentence. That old phone alone, is the main reason why I had somebody else working with me, to put the first couple of issues together, along with another person, who used to create the PDF, for those on the email list until May 2018. The newsletter has been composed on such iPhones as: iPhone 4s, iPhone 5c, iPhone SE, iPhone 8 and the iPhone SE 2020. This post and future posts will be composed on the iPhone 13 Pro, which I have in my hand at this moment. It is working well for me and sure, I had to adapt to using Face ID and forget all about touch ID, but I’m used to it now.
To close off this article of the post, I hope the newsletter lasts 10 more years. Can we do that? I really hope so because I enjoy doing it and I also hope to get you more involved as well. I want you involved because I don’t wanna be the only one who is posting things, such as links and all manner of articles. I have involved some of you because I’ve taken Facebook posts and inserted them into the newsletter blogs and I would rather you email me with some thing and if it’s worthy, I will put it here. I’m very open to hear your comments and have been, since the very beginning. The only thing I ask is that you are kind, no hate speech or anything that is derogatory. Are we all clear with that? Good now let’s get on with the rest of this issue.
Queen
This is another deviation outside the normal topic, because I can do that and it’s my blog and my newsletter. I also do this to give you a break from all this Weather Radio stuff and besides, I’m not just about Weather and WX radio and I have other interests too. I’ve talked about: The Simpsons, Family Guy, George Carlin and Monty Python, because I like all of those people and TV shows. Perhaps one day I will talk about Sesame Street and its own weather segments and for those who like the classic era of the show, there are some newer segments with Grover which are kind of weird.
Now I’d like to talk about Queen for a moment. I have been a fan of the band, but I’ve never had the chance to see them live. Despite that, I am aware of their reputation because of their stay jacked and of course, you can’t beat the incomparable Freddie Mercury as a Front man and songwriter. After all, it was he who wrote the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are The Champions, Killer Queen, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and a bunch of other hits. If you want to know who wrote what, just look at the liner notes on all the albums, where the track listing appears. If you want to go even deeper into all the albums including the last two while Freddie was alive, that’s where Wikipedia comes in quite handy, because the albums The Miracle and Innuendo are all credited to the entire band. However, Wikipedia tells us who actually wrote a song such as The Show Must Go On, or These Are The Days Of Our Lives, among the others on the two albums.
I mention Queen here because guitarist Dr. Brian May is also an astrophysicist and he has his PhD. He also does stereoscopic photography and a bunch of other things on his plate, besides playing some smoking guitar for Queen. His weather contribution is the song Dead On Time, which is one of the band’s lesser known tracks. It’s a great rocker and it ends with a thunderstorm, which Brian recorded on his tape recorder. If you have the Live Killers album, that same storm starts it off and goes into the fast version of We Will Rock You. Anyway, let’s rock and listen to some thunder. https://youtu.be/uKoivlPUg_Y
The other reason for Queen being a part of the newsletter is because it is their 50th anniversary and if you look them up on Youtube, there is an occasional feature called Queen The Greatest, which has 50 episodes, about the band and the various highlights and probably, one or two lowlights too, such as the death of Freddie Mercury on November 24th 1991. Actually, not all episodes have been posted, as this series had started in March and will continue into 2022.
As for the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, I haven’t made an effort to see it yet and I won’t either. The closest I come to even experiencing any of the movie, is through the Bohemian Rhapsody (The Original Soundtrack), which I had purchased on iTunes in October 2018. I enjoy that, because it has some goodies which are true highlights, such as their entire set at LiveAid in 1985, complete with Freddie’s call and response with the audience.
There is another track which has some weather sounds in it, but it is long and ambient. If you are willing to take about 22 minutes out of your day, to listen to a track, which ebs and flows, be my guest. It is on the 1995 album Made In Heaven and is either called “Track 13” or simply “Untitled”, depending on which format you find it on. It was a great alarm for me, as it is quiet and eventually crescendos with rain and thunder, to an ending, with drum beats and the final word being Freddie saying “Fab.” Well, that was “fab” and now let’s get back to the regular topic, after we hear more rain and thunder, after being lulled to sleep. https://youtu.be/aqMiaS88TlE
Here is something more, proving that Freddie is a better singer than a news, sports or weather forecast presenter. In fact, he screws it up big time and it’s hilarious. https://youtu.be/YT0PYyUYi0Y
This is a post which I had done for my original blog, to which there is a link in a previous post, from March 2017. I am including it here because it looks back on something I used to do and can no longer do (as easily) because of the discontinuation of a major intercity bus service in Canada.
From 2013 to 2016, I used to post on what I called Weather Wednesday and that was where I would post about all things weather, or Weather Radio in my first blog. Back before 2018, I used to go on little day trips out of town, whether it was by myself or with someone else. Why? Because I wanted to and I love riding in buses, including highway coaches. Altho, I also miss bouncing around in a School bus and I hope to do that again someday, when all public health regulations are lifted and the current COVID-19 pandemic ends.
This article (within a post) is all about my first planned out of town bus trip in a year or so since January 2014. At first glance this may not have anything to do with weather but it does have much to do with my involvement with Weatheradio Canada. I will explain as I go along in this post so, read on. When I go somewhere on the bus or any kind of vehicular transportation I usually take a Weather Radio receiver with me, so I can check out all the channles for VHF openings and whether all transmitters are in good working order. This served me well, when it came to reporting issues with various WXR’s along the way and in some cases, questions were answered. For example: back in 2012 the Winsor and Sarnia Ontario WXR’s were not in step with each other, even though they were technically still repeater stations of each other.
The other reason I ttake my WX radio with me is so I can keep myself entertained, besides just listening to music and now, possibly watching The Simpsons on my iPhone. I have always enjoyed listening to radio anyway, while going from city to city and that probably came from going to the school for the blind in Brantford Ontario, where most of us came from out of town and went home on Fridays and came back on Sunday evenings. Anyway, for this trip I decided to go to Barrie Ontario, which I had been to before and could go where I usually went with some difficulty but not so much that I needed help getting from the bus terminal to my next destination. I of course, took my WX radio and some other things to keep me sain, while going both directions and just listened as we went from Toronto to Barrie, while my radio switched to the local Weatheradio Canada transmitter, located in Collingwood. However, when I got to Barrie I had no idea that the entire transit system had been revised and there were newly named and numbered bus routes. This I found out after the fact, the next morning while just looking around on Wikipedia. I have found the information I need for my next trip to Barrie and will hopefully be much more able to find my bus to get where I want to go in Barrie. When I went back home I was also able to make use of my newly acquired GPS app, which I have always used when I wanted to go somewhere in Toronto. I used it in Barrie too but I really wanted to use it on the way home, so I could keep track of where we were. I usually ask the driver to drop me off at a convenient store, at the corner of my street and they usually oblige. So, I use my app and was able to stay aware of where I was, despite GPS having to recalculate first. However, I made it back home and all the applicable Weatheradio Canada transmitters along the way worked just fine. I even heard the stations in Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes on the way to Barrie in the morning, as it was a clear night before with a good opening on VHF.
On an unrelated note, I also took an extra power pack with me to charge my iPhone and I certainly needed it then. My GPS ate up a lot of juice and well, I made sure to charge up the phone during the second half of my trip. I may purchase a second pack because I tried using my Crank Radio, which has a Solar panel. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to get into the sun as much as I would’ve liked to. The other problem is that it wouldn’t charge my iPhone because it isn’t powerful enough to handle it, without ac power or even the power of the sun to charge up the radio and the phone. Ah well… I’ll figure something out by the time I make my next trip out of town. Some time later on in the summer of 2015, I did make my second trip to Barrie and this time, it was a lot more chaotic, due to traffic and I wasn’t going to be able to get home on the bus which I would usually take. On the plus side, I did manage to get home with everything charged up for when I needed it and I got my money back, from the Toronto Coach Terminal, from what would have been my trip home on Greyhound.
I went again in January 2017, to pick up a radio which I’d spotlighted in an earlier issue and that was memorable, for the wrong reasons. I got there and back all right, but I unfortunately had to deal with food poisoning the next day and if you haven’t gone through it, I don’t wish that on anybody as it’s gross and that’s all I’m gonna say.
Speaking of Greyhound, it has unfortunately been discontinued in Canada and obviously, I’m very sad and I’m not surprised about this turn of events. After all, the pandemic had basically turned our whole world upside down and hopefully by the time spring rolls around, we will be back to normal, or something resembling it as we were living before March 11, 2020. Will I ever make a trip out of town again? I don’t know, because things have changed for me. When I did my trips in 2017, I not only used a radio, but I also used one of the Weather apps which I have promoted in past issues of the newsletter. Now I happen to have a bunch of apps, along with Weatheradio Canada, I’m in good hands if I ever decide to skip town for a while.
This is for those who have an iPhone, which is compatible with iOS15 and in case you don’t know, the weather app now pushes rain and snow alerts to your iPhone. Just set it up and you are good to go. However, this video will help you set up a shortcut, to give you weather conditions on the lock screen. https://youtu.be/Hc_BKjtIsRU
Here is another link and it’s better described, for those of us who are blind and visually impaired. https://youtu.be/u-4gsfUMc78
The iOS Weather App
Let’s talk about those of us who use either iPhones or iPads and who obviously, know about the native weather application on them for a bit. Ever since I had first acquired my iPhone in 2012, the weather app has always been there. However, because it didn’t have the raw numbers from Environment Canada I didn’t use it all that much. However, in recent years I had started looking at it, especially when the weather was about to make a transition, either from fall to winter or from winter to spring and I would look at the ten-day forecast and compare that to what I have, on applications which use data from Environment Canada. I would also look at the sunrise and sunset times, to remind myself that the weather is about to change, especially in March.
Earlier this year, the weather app had started to include weather alerts and this has helped me a great deal, especially with CANWARN and sending emails to a group of people, with whom I have fired off the latest watches, warnings and advisories affecting both them and myself. This has lead to iOS 15, finally deciding to make a change to the weather app, in that it now provides rain or snow alerts. I appreciate it, but I don’t know how accurate those alerts are. After all, it might be raining outside my window and there could be no alerts pushed to my phone, stating that light rain is starting soon, or I could get an alert and nothing could come of it.
The reason for this change is because Apple has purchased an app called “Dark Sky”, or “Dark Skies” and as far as I know, it’s an American app. Either way, the change has been made and now we have the rain and snow alerts. The question is, will this eventually expand to having all manner of watches, warnings and advisories pushed to our phones from the weather app itself in the future? If so, that would cancel out a lot of other applications which do the same thing, including some apps created by governments such as WeatherCAN. However, if Apple does decide to go this direction, I hope that they don’t become scared of over-notification, by only pushing alerts when they are issued and not when they are being updated. If updated alerts are pushed, this would be a big help to those of us who are both CANWARN and SKYWARN trained and especially those, who are coordinators, (who may happen to be net controlers) reading out the latest weather alerts on a repeater, or a bunch of them within a region.
I am looking forward to see what will happen with the native iOS weather app in the future and if weather alerts will be pushed to devices. By the way, it will not deter me from listening to Weatheradio Canada and I hope that others who listen to either WXR Canada or NOAA Weather Radio won’t stop listening either, just because your phone now dings, when a watch or warning is issued. Smart phones are great, but when the power goes out they won’t work to help save your life and they are bricks, until everything is restored.
THE WATCHDOG REPORT If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call 1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA at nwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call 1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team at ec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook Group. https://m.facebook.com/groups/weatheradio/
You can also email me directly at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com and it will be passed on for you. Or, you can tweet to the Weather Radio Listeners newsletter on Twitter, by following me @WxrNewsletter. Note from the author: I will mainly include items with a definitive time on their start to finish and ones with unknown starts or endings, I will of course include as well, but with a mention of them being unknown.
On Sunday August 1st, it was discovered that St Catharines VAD 320 had gone into watchdog and it was not restored until some time during the morning of August 2nd. However, it went back into watchdog around 3:15 AM and wasn’t restored until about 10:40 AM… the same day.
Then, on August 10th at about 3:15 AM, St Catharines VAD 320 went into watchdog. It wasn’t restored until around 8:45 AM… the same day. It had gone down again, either on Saturday, August 14 or Sunday, August 15 and was restored on the 16th.
On Saturday, August 21 add around 7:40 PM Kitchener XMJ 330 had gone into watchdog and wasn’t restored until the morning of Monday August 23rd. This had happened during a time when a bunch of severe thunderstorm watches and warnings were being issued, throughout Southern Ontario and this was the only WXR affected.
On Friday August 27th at around 9:35 AM, Toronto XMJ 225 had gone into watchdog, after being stuck since around 2:00 AM. It was restored within 15 minutes of the report.
On Monday August 30th, St Catharines VAD 320 had gone into watchdog again, after a couple of days of severe thunderstorms and all the watches and warnings which had come through. It was restored at 9:58 Am. However, it and the rest of Ontario had gone back into watchdog at around 4:15 Pm and wasn’t restored across Ontario until some time in the evening.
On Tuesday September 7th, Kitchener XMJ330 went into watchdog mode at around 1:15 PM and wasn’t restored until some time during the afternoon.
On October 9th at around 6:15 PM, XLN470 in London, had gone into watchdog and wasn’t restored until some time on Friday October 15th.
On Thursday October 14th, Kitchener XMJ 330 had gone into watchdog mode some time during the late afternoon or early evening. It wasn’t restored until Monday, October 18, just after 11:00 AM.
Say Hello 2 Weather
For many years we have been able to get our local weather on the phone, as a recording or a 1 (900) number gave those who wanted to, a chance to talk to a meteorologist. No need, because of all manner of apps and websites for us to stay up to date on the latest weather in our area.
In the past, Canadians have had to call specific numbers in order to hear the local forecast and as the author of the newsletter, I’ve called all of them and I have even used them as a guide to figure out where problems with Weatheradio Canada could be occurring. Sadly, not every region is represented and this goes for some key areas in Ontario, such as cottage country and the far north of the province. In my own case, I was toldd to call all of the numbers back in 2013, in order to check on each option in both languages and write it down. If I didn’t have unlimited Canadian calling, it would have been a really large bill. It wasn’t, but it took a week to go through everything and it gave me a new appreciation for having weather on the phone. After all, it did replace Weatheradio Canada when I couldn’t listen to it anymore on TV.
The specific numbers are all in the past, as we can now say HelloWeather, with 2 numbers to call. We can now get the information in and around our local area, along with just about anywhere else across Canada. I’ve used it and I’m very happy with what I’ve heard I can do and if you give it a couple of minutes in order to learn how it works, you will love it too.
The phone numbers are: 1 (833) 794-3556 or 1 (833) 586-3836. There are two numbers because they each Put the main focus on either English or French, depending on which phone number you call. However, you can hear either language if you call either number by pressing one on the telephone keypad when prompted. You can even hear marine forecasts and I for one have been waiting for this since about 2008 or so, when I had first heard about the possibility of a one 800 number being created, as a national number as opposed to a bunch of numbers for specific cities and areas.
Give those two numbers a try today and sure, it’s another option for those who may not have a computer or a smart phone, but I think that you will agree that getting your weather by calling a number is just as helpful as hearing it over a VHF radio, reading the text on the website or an app, or hearing about it on radio and TV. By the way, there will be a website, or a link to it somewhere on the EccC website, talking about it better than I can. It’s not ready yet and I will hopefully have a link to it in a future post.
Semi-Final Words
Since the last issue, i-Notify has come to most (if not all) of Ontario and I am quite happy with it. Besides, as I sleep with my WX radio playing, when I hear what time it is (at the end of the station ID) I know whether I have more, or less time to try and get some shuteye, after waking up before I need to get up and start my day. This also means that I no longer use my phone as an alarm clock and there for, have no music or sounds to wake me up. Besides, with my new iPhone, I want to take as much care of the battery as I can, before it degrades, or before Apple decides to include an option for battery conditioning. I’m sure it’s possible, as there are some chargers for nickel metal hydride batteries which come with that option. Either way, my phone is great and I enjoy having the opportunity, to get a new phone, as opposed to a phone which has been around for a few months before I have it in my hands.
As for i-Notify, it had come to Ontario on September 8th, after the RWT and after a severe weather outbreak. I was as surprised as anyone, when I had heard Tom and Nicolas coming out of my Midland WR300 and other radios! However, back then myself and others had some criticisms on how it sounded, because of the length of the cycle among other things. Here is what somebody had written and I have put in my own comments as well.
By the way, Marc Fitkin (who is the creator of the NOAA Weather Radio and Weatheradio Canada Facebook group) is that somebody I am talking about! He has his thoughts and I agree with him, but had to explain at least one thing he had mentioned in my reply, which you will also see here. Anyway, here is what he said, along with some of my own comments to back up what he is saying.
Thoughts, Reflections and Suggestions
So after some reflection I have some thoughts (yes there was smoke out my ears).
What I like: -Well it’s done, after all these years, Steve and Francois can take a bow and retire. -English male is pretty good despite some pronunciation issues, otherwise it’s generally good (this is what the Prescott CMB should have been like).
What I don’t like: French male is awful. I had no trouble with Francois despite my lack of French speaking ability, I at least could get a basic understanding. Not this time.
-Extended Forecasts and AQIs need better integration. I’m not opposed to AQIs but make it part of the forecast, not its own round-up. Extended forecast should be said once. That’s it. This is really bogging the cycle down.
Unknowns at least as far back as September 11th: Alerting. The assumption is the Ontario Egg Timer is gone. But the big point is the format. Will it be like a canned message with a hard EOM or a full alerting message with a hard EOM? Since then I and others in Ontario (who have migrated to i-Notify) have heard alerts go through and it’s not what it should be yet. Some of the text has been spoken and there should be more, from the text on the EC website and elsewhere, including WeatherCAN and the emails, which I have sent to myself, because of my involvement with CANWARN.
Unresolved at the time: The continued weirdness with the 1050Hz tone and it’s limited usage still bugs me but that’s the way it is. I don’t agree with it but I’m just a minion.
Now, I had responded with the following below (with at least one edit since then):
I agree with your comments about the extended forecasts and if they want to do this, they should at least group full regions together, with their 7 day forecasts. For example: York and Duram like we had during the evening of Friday September 10th forecasts. They could go through all areas in the region and then, the extended forecast could play, for all of York and Durham. This is just an example and could be applied to all regions throughout Ontario with multiple sub-regions for SAME alerts.
Yes, Niclas has to be relegated to maybe the station ID messages and possibly, the RWT and RMT messages, along with either Tom or Ava. This brings me to another point I have been banging on for a while, which is that Ava should be doing the English translation for the station ID’s instead of having Tom do everything, except for alerts. If Nicolas does the French translation for the ID, I would have no problem with that. Otherwise, please give us (and any newly upgraded and transformed stations in the future) Chantal as the main French language voice on the broadcast, like they have in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
As for the CMB, yes, it’s Ava and she sounds awful on the broadcast because it is copy and paste, like AVIPADs was. I think they wanted a female voice , because most of the people who had red out the text are female. We hear Ava doing the English translation for weather alerts and she doesn’t sound all that bad, compared to CMB, as we had heard with the water spout watch for Western Lake Ontario, on Wednesday and Thursday, along with most of Friday.
This is from two people who take an interest in Weatheradio Canada and one of us actually sold radios to the other, back in the day. Actually, I believe that we take more than a passing interest in the service as we have created: Facebook groups, newsletters and blogs between the two of us. I also can’t forget that we are both CANWARN trained and are friends with another listener, who has his own connection to Weatheradio Canada, through a streaming website. all 3 of us, take more than a passing interest in Weatheradio Canada, as two of us are ham radio operators.
Anyway, I hope that our thoughts are considered and they do what they can to fix this, to make Weatheradio Canada more listenable, to those of us in Ontario. We know that French on the broadcast has been here to stay, since 2002, but the voice needs to be changed, to be more understandable to those of us who only speak English. I also hope that they consider more variety with the voice selection in the future, with possibly having the same voices doing the forecast and round ups, doing the weather alerts along with what they are speaking now. What I am suggesting is that Tom should be voicing all of the main weather boxes, while having Ava do the station IDs and maybe even the AQI, if the AQI will continue to be in its own box in the future. As for French, we need to hear more of Chantal and less Nicolas. If the voice Selection had more variety to it, it would give the configurations more flow and it would make more sense, then what we are currently hearing on the broadcast. Besides, hearing one voice Per language (throughout the bulk of the cycle) is boring and very easily can lull you to sleep.
Also, if Weatheradio Canada wishes to survey people on the voices, why not consult with those who deal with these voices every single day first? As the author of the newsletter (who is blind from birth) I am one whom they can count on to give them honest criticism and as I have said repeatedly, I know all four voices well because they are on my iPhone. I still have the samples I was given in 2015 and if they have any arguments about what to do with certain products, they can by all means consult with me first. They have my email address and I’m always here, as somebody who uses these voices every single day, in order to navigate my iPhone. I have to, because I can’t see and even the latest update of WeatherCAN mentions something about VoiceOver, which happens to have all 4 voices as options for download and usage. Well, I have them all and I use them all in varying degrees so, why not talk to me first, before talking to people who may not know the voices as well and are only going by samples which they are given?
Final Words
Since I had just gone on about i-Notify, let’s go back to when Weatheradio Canada had humans reading out all of the information on the broadcast. As recently as Friday, someone had posted a cycle from May 13th 1990 On YouTube, as suggested by me. That same somebody had posted an older cycle from another Weatheradio Canada station in Quebec. I had replied, asking if there was a chance of having an old cycle from Toronto XMJ 225? Yes, there was and here it is.
By the way, you will recognize one name from previous posts and The other unnamed voice you will hear is a man named Ron Huberts. I had first heard him back in 1988, on CJCL during the summer and soon after, I had started to hear him more often on the broadcast. I’m posting this, because it will give you an idea of how the forecast sounded and how the regions were grouped together, much like I had done in February 2019, with the text from January 7th and 8th with all of the forecasts, weather synopses and weather alerts in affect. I hope there are more broadcast cycles of XMJ 225 from back then available and hopefully, some of which I remember.
To be honest with you, I don’t remember this cycle, but I do remember hearing these two voices during the day. Back then, I was listening to both Weatheradio Canada and playing guitar, trying to be John Lennon. I can play, but I haven’t for a long time! Maybe some day I will get the urge to pick up the axe and whale. Actually, I still sing and at least that keeps me active musically.
Anyway, when you listen to the broadcast those of you who had only heard Weatheradio Canada as recent as the 2000s, will be shocked to hear people, reading out the text as efficiently as they did and no stumbling over words. https://youtu.be/FyZJVb9DZTQ
Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter for August 1st 2021 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada.html Hello and welcome to the second issue of the newsletter for 2021. This issue is not numbered, but has a theme to it similar to the last issue in May. Since then, I am fully vaccinated and with my second jab, I did have some side effects. But, that feeling of being sick after getting the shot outweighs the risk of getting the COVID and, the Delta Varient. In fact, I only felt sick for a day and it went, rather quickly, unlike a normal illness.
Since June 1, Weatheradio Canada has begun the switch over from AVIPAD’s to i-Notify and it has been interesting to watch. It had happened some time during the day and I had been given notice of it, on the afternoon of June 1st and I will talk more about that later on.
What I thought I would do is look back before AVIPAD’s and partially skip over to i-Notify, to see where we have been and where Weatheradio Canada could potentially go. After all, it is text to speech, in that what ever appears on screen as text can go out over the network, such as any and all severe weather bulletins and can be heard, much as they are written on the EccC website, various weather apps and emails to CANWARN net controlers. Anyway, let’s start talking about how things were, before 1994. I must also tell you that I am giving you what I remember from back then and I had help, from a professional music geek on at least one aspect of looking back. Anyway, let’s go back in time. Shall we?
Way back in the olden days of Weatheradio Canada (from 1977 to around 1994) each WXR was manually loaded by staff of the weather office in a studio using 8 track tapes with a direct line to one transmitter site. The difference is that now it is less information and much more basic, with only: forecasts, hourly reports, marine forecasts and current marine reports. Before then, we also were given access to climate data, travelers forecasts (for Canada and the US), the weather synopsis, the agricultural or farm forecast, highway conditions in the winter and radar reports during the hourly inland reports. For example: intense thunderstorms moving southerly at 40 KM from a line between a couple of locations on either the east or westerly side of it. During severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, all programming would cease and the only information you would here is updated watches or warnings, along with hourly reports. In 1991, that was altered to allow for public forecasts to be played in the configuration during such events and later on, The only time that all programming was curtailed would be during tornado warnings in the area, as late as 2002!
Most of the same meteorologists we would hear on Weatheradio Canada, would be also heard on radio stations, which didn’t broadcast with a rock or top 40 format. Environment Canada offered this as a free service to any station that wanted to take them. Back in the day, this audio was distributed through a company called Broadcast News. It was just a public service, really, that made radio stations sound more authoritative.
For example: CJCL 1430 did this, as they played music for older adults, branded as “Music of your life” and CFRB also did something similar, with a mostly talk format. Even some CBC stations had allowed EC meteorologists to read out the forecast! In some cases, an Environment Canada meteorologist would call into a radio station and do a hit, reading out the forecast, including the extended forecast. Once again, this was for radio stations which didn’t play music for younger people, or in an area which had agricultural concerns. For example, CKPC in Branford did this a lot on both the FM and AM side, where meteorologists would call in and give the five day forecast at the end of a set of music after the DJ did a backsell. Even my friends at 610 CKTB in St Catharines had someone from Environment Canada reading out the weather forecasts on the air, namely Denis Paquette in the mid 80s. I hadn’t asked him about how he did the hits and when he did them, but I imagine that after the programming schedule was put together, our friendly meteorologist would call in and recording would start, as a voice track, which would be recorded on tape. This was probably different for each radio station and for each case, as they all had different needs depending on the format and when weather forecasts were broadcasted. For example: CJCL 1430 used to have someone from Environment Canada record themselves reading out the forecast for a specific show in the broadcast day. For a long time, the main man was Harold Hosein, who also made appearances on Toronto XMJ 225 sometimes. Now, he has probably retired, after a time at Citytv, during the news. One of his main fraises (for when rain was in the forecast), was “get out the rein gear” which he would say in a sing-song type voice, in his Caribbean accent. As someone who enjoys dialect, I’ve made fun of it to, in order to make people laugh whom I knew who would not be offended. Anyway, I digress.
Some time in the 1990s, there was a program review of Weatheradio Canada and during the Review, weather offices were eliminated, The configuration was streamlined to include as short a cycle as possible and AVIPaDS was developed to Aid in streamlining the process. Until the summer of 2001, human voices were heard only when severe weather bulletins were issued and from then on, it was AVIPaDS, reading everything. This further continued as Weatheradio Canada went bilingual in 2002 and as mentioned earlier, the only time human voices were heard was when tornado warnings were issued for parts of the listening area, or the station ID. Speaking of the ID, from 2003 to 2007 AVIPaDS had read them out and that was changed back to a human because of the miss pronunciation of at least one letter in French.
What also happened in the 90s was that stations were breaking off and becoming standalone WXR’s, as opposed to being repeater stations. For example: in May 1991 Collingwood broke off from Toronto and became a main station on its own. This was sad for me, because I used to hear the weather for all of Southern Ontario and this included cottage country, along with marine forecasts for: Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Georgian Bay. Of course, now we have almost 300 stations across Canada, located in both major cities and rural areas, which include cottage country.
Something else which had happened, was the inclusion of SAME, to the broadcast. I remember in November 2004, when during a weekend all weather forecast and hourly reports were turned off, probably in order for SAME to be installed throughout Ontario and I imagine, that this happened in other provinces as well. I also remember hearing SAME (for the first time) in January 2006, before I knew what it was. Someone was testing it out and didn’t tell anybody and I had learned what it was called, in May 2007, when I was talking on the phone with Bill Hepbern about something. I had purchased my first SAME radio in 2004, before I knew what SAME was and I had no idea, that it required entering in a code. I had no internet access back then and it took me 3 years, for me to purchase a better SAME radio, which actually would go off when an alert was issued. Now, I have a few of them and I don’t mind when watches and warnings are issued. Altho, I would feel differently if I had a pet.
THE WATCHDOG REPORT If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call 1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA at nwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call 1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team at ec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook Group. You will find the link to it later in this issue and all issues of the newsletter. You can also email the author directly at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com and it will be passed on for you. Note from the author: I will mainly include items with a definitive time on their start to finish and ones with unknown starts or endings, I will of course include as well, but with a mention of them being unknown.
On Tuesday, May 18, St Catharines VAD 320 was brought back to life and is still working, as of this post. It got the same upgrade as Toronto did in November 2019, so it is ready to switch over to i-Notify when everything is ready to move.
On Saturday May 22nd at around 2:37 PM, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog mode and was restored, minutes later.
On Monday, June 14 at 7:15 PM ADT, The entire provinces of: New Brunswick, prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia had all gone into watchdog. They were brought back on June 15th, around 10:00 AM ADT.
At around 7:15 P.m. central time on Friday, June 16, all three prairie provinces had gone into watchdog and were not restored until some time on Saturday June 19th.
On Sunday, June 20, Toronto XMJ 225 went into watchdog, over the course of a few hours. Simply, information bins had dropped off until the stay alive message had kicked in, without an alert. Also, the Atlantic region had gone into watchdog… again. In this case, there is more of a time stamp on when it had gone down, as it seemed to have stopped updating the hourly reports at 9:00 PM AT, which means that all WXR’s in the Atlantic region went into watchdog at around 12:15 AM on Monday June 21st. Both Toronto and the Atlantic region weren’t restored, until some time on June 21st.
Kitchener XMJ330 in watchdog mode currently as of Saturday June 26, 2021 and was not restored until Monday June 28th. After that, there was a problem with the telephone ATAD, where option 2 wouldn’t play… in either language. Option 2 is supposed to be playing weather conditions and that wasn’t taken care of, until Tuesday June 29th.
Meanwhile, around 5:15 PM on June 29th, Kitchener had gone into watchdog again and it wasn’t restored until sometime on June 30.
On Tuesday, July 27, the entire Atlantic region had gone into watchdog and it wasn’t restored until around 10:45 ADT.
On Thursday July 29th at around 6:13 PM ET, St Catharines VAD 320 had gone into watchdog and was not restored until 9:23 AM the next day.
And Now for i-Notify
As for i-Notify and it’s insertion into Weatheradio Canada, I will give you an updated and altered version of a post I had done on June 2nd, which happened to be my 48th birthday. I have some updates to it, which I think are needed at this point. I am not going to do the usual links to apps or weather spotting tips this time, as you can find them in other posts. I will probably bring them back for November. Anyway, let’s get i-Notified.
Since June 1st, Weatheradio Canada has begun the transformation from the old AVIPAD’s software, to i-Notify. In fact, here is the message as it had played during the RWT on the Winnipeg WXR the previous Wednesday. https://youtu.be/2Rk5gKv2n7g
I’ve told you about both AVIPAD’s and i-Notify (As I understood them) in past posts and on May 26th during the RWT message, it was advertised as a gentle reminder, rather than inserting it into the sequence as a public service announcement. From that, I was excited and so were others, because we would Potentially get to hear a bunch of new voices and if you are a long time reader, you know all four voices as I had described them in a post from August 2018. Here’s what it sounded like back then. https://youtu.be/gKGDn0UPFwU
As you may have noticed, only two voices were used and that was in Quebec, while all 4 voices are being used in the Atlantic Region. I was excited to listen to the entire broadcast cycle in both languages and when I did, I realized that The females had been shut out, except for weather alerts. However, in Quebec it was only the male voices and I was initially disappointed. I love Tom and Nicolas, but I wanted to hear more variety and I felt and still feel, that the female voices should be used for the station ID messages, rather than weather alerts. The reason is that they sound so personable and so does Tom too. However, he would be more frightening when an alert is issued, rather than hearing a soothing female voice in that role. In that sense, I would want there to be as many watches and warnings in effect as possibll, but I woulnd’t want people to get hurt or killed, because of severe weather. If the lasses are going to be the ones bringing the bad news, I’d be less afraid and more willing to sit on my hands and listen, while the world burns around me (so to speak).
When Atlantic Canada began to use i-Notify, it was a different situation, where it went back and forth, between it and AVIPAD’s, with one or two of the bins remaining and as of now, the older station ID still plays, without the time announcements. Hopefully that can be fixed at some point and my request for Tom and Nicolas to be moved to the alert box, while Ava and Chantal go to where the station ID’s are situated.
One of the main problems with i-Notify was a lack of SAME alerts to radios and that was fixed, dew to many emails and phone calls. I am looking forward to i-Notify in Ontario and you can be sure, that I will be listening for any hair out of place, including if any of my SAME radios aren’t triggered.
As of now, i-Notify covers Weatheradio Canada from Quebec to the east coast and possibly, British Columbia and Yukon. At some point, the Prairies and arctic will join the party, along with Ontario and that will happen when all stations are upgraded to make the switch. Hopefully the change will be complete, by the end of the year and Weatheradio Canada can use all of the advantages of i-Notify, to add more back into the broadcast cycle. After all, it would be nice to hear climate data again, as we got to hear record high and low temperatures and about heating degree days in the winter. The latter, I have very little understanding about how that works, nor do I understand growing degree days and how they are calculated for farmers. Maybe the weather synopsis coming right back? How about highway conditions in the winter? How about adding more back into the marine forecast? The possibilities are nearly endless as to what can be done, after the transition is complete.
To end off this post, I have something from a friend of mine, who is also blind and has a request for NWR. I have a similar request which may be more realistic. But, here goes anyway.
“My mission is to further preserve the CRS (Consol Replacement System) voice as well as get it back on Noah weather radio similar to what you’re doing. With the streaming services, I’m trying to help the EAS enthusiast community, as well as the NOAA weather radio enthusiast out there be able to listen to stations from wherever they want and whenever they want. I love listening to other stations, especially across Illinois and Missouri, but I guess I’m a little biased there because I live in Illinois right next to Missouri.”
Okay, my own Mission is for both NOAA Weather Radio and Weatheradio Canada to work together, closer than ever before. What I think should be done is to get Tom and Ava as (As the two English-speaking voices) on both networks, along with Paulina and Juan (for NWR stations with Spanish on the broadcast). I would be happy if i-Notify was on both networks so it could be a collaborative working relationship, between both networks as opposed to two different systems on each one with different voices. Realistically, I can’t see CRS coming back to NWR, because it’s outdated and the voices are no longer available. However, I have stopped listening to NWR because it is now only one voice on the network (per language) and as much as I like Paul Junior, he does sound rather robotic and he seems to droan, as opposed to Tom, who is much more lively.
I hope that when i-Notify covers all of Weatheradio Canada, both it and NWR will possibly consider such a collaboration, as it would make Listeners of both networks happy. We all love Tom and Ava would be a voice to get used to for some people, but I feel that if this happens people will listen more often and turn other people onto either network in either country.
Hello. It is June 2 and it happens to be my 48th birthday, but that’s not why I’m posting today. Since yesterday, Weatheradio Canada has begun the transformation, from the old AVIPAD’s software, to i-Notify. In fact, here is the message as it had played during the RWT on the Winnipeg WXR last Wednesday. https://youtu.be/G0rptFhv9Bs
I’ve told you about both AVIPAD’s and i-Notify (As I understood them) in past posts and last Wednesday during the RWT message, it was advertised as a gentle reminder, rather than inserting it into the sequence as a public service announcement. From that, I was initially excited and so were others, because we would Potentially get to hear a bunch of new voices and if you are a long time reader, you know all four voices as I had described them in a post from August 2018.
As of yesterday I had learned that only two voices would be used, which has thrown away all potential, to make the broadcast more interesting and varied. In short, it’s an all male cast of characters and I found this out, because the Montreal WXR was switched over, at some point during yesterday, along with the rest of Quebec. Initially, I was excited to listen to the entire broadcast cycle in both languages and when I did, I realized that The females had been shut out. I live in Toronto and had heard the Montreal WXR as a live stream, from one of the weather apps I have inserted into the newsletter posts. Anyway, I digress.
Okay, I agree that the most important thing is to get Weather information out to the listeners but, you also want to keep listeners interested in what you are doing and what has happened, goes completely against that. Simply put, Weatheradio Canada sounds as boring and robotic as it did, before the switch and I will explain why I am very unhappy with this change.
First, let’s remember that we had four voices which were used in testing and we had two male voices and two female voices, which are all available for download if you have an Apple device. As a review they are: Tom, Nicholas, Ava and Chantal. It’s the first two voices which are what we hear now, with the ladies being left out. Why is that? Partly because of a survey which was conducted in August 2019, to see what people thought of all four voices. I will grant that some people didn’t like Ava, because of another radio service which makes her sound very muffled. Thankfully, we learned that on Weatheradio Canada, there was no such problem and she sounded Great, with no volume degradation. Unfortunately, it was the Announcement of the potential decommissioning of the 48 stations which had revealed this. With Chantal, there was no such problem and back in 2016, she was the French voice that was released as a sample, to a select bunch of people, along with Tom. Sadly, both her and Ava have been overlooked.
Another reason for the exclusion of the women is because of me. Okay, I should review something I had confessed in the last issue of the Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter. I had been asked which voices would be good to use for the station ID’s. I had suggested Tom and Nicolas, not knowing that they would be used for the launch of i-Notify and not just for WXR’s which had just been upgraded. The reason I had suggested the two male voices is because in the past, it was Tom and Chantal, which were used to announce the survey’s in 2018 and I felt and still feel, that if you are going to have 2 voices saying the same thing in 2 different languages, they should both be the same gender. Now that i-Notify is launching, I hope that at some point this year, we can change the ID’s to include Ava and Chantal, in order to include all 4 voices in the broadcast somehow. I didn’t mean for this to happen and I hope that the lady’s will be allowed to say a few words, during the cycle.
If you need a refresher on what all 4 voices sound like, here is a test cycle from 2017 and it features all 4 of them, as a part of it. https://youtu.be/Ihm5bNBD-4g
Now, let’s contrast that with how i-Notify has rolled out in Quebec and likely, throughout all of Canada in the comming months. https://youtu.be/gKGDn0UPFwU
Do you notice how boring the latter is, compared to the test cycle on the Winnipeg transmitter? Never mind the sound quality, never mind how awful the French sounds and think about how dull the broadcast is right now, because of the use of only two male voices, as opposed to using both male and female voices to perform various functions. For the most part, I had hoped that what we heard in the test message would be a part of the broadcast and there was some potential there, to make Weatheradio Canada sound interesting again. Unfortunately, the powers that be, had decided to make it as unlistenable as possible, essentially copying what NWR has done since 2016, with one English-speaking voice and one Spanish-speaking voice. In this case, the English speaker is male and the Spanish speaker is female, as opposed to having two males and two female voices on the broadcast. Like most people, I don’t like how NWR sounds either at this time and now, Weatheradio Canada has decided to stay as it was, rather than use everything they have been given, to make the broadcast interesting.
On the other hand, I love the time announcements at the end of the station ID’s and it saves me having to check my phone, when I need to know what time it is. I’ve mentioned this before but, I sleep with my WX radio on at night and I like to know what time it is, when I wake up and if I wake up, before my alarm goes off. I don’t like having to get up to check the time, only to find out that I have hours to go, before I have to get up.
Otherwise, i-Notify has let me down but, I feel this can change. If management are willing to hear me out and listen to what I think it should sound like in the future, there is potential to make it better and more engaging, while also saving lives and giving us the information we need, in order to plan our day. I don’t say what I have said, with any glee, because I love the service and I’m a volunteer, as well as a Long time listener. I’ve gone through the period when humans would read out the forecast, weather conditions, marine forecast and any watches or warnings issued, along with the synopsis. What made it exciting for me was to hear new voices, every so often and with AVIPAD’s, that has changed. Because of the limitations in the language, I had let it go. However, with i-Notify, it’s great to have much more flexibility, with the potential for watches, warnings and advisory statements being on the broadcast again. However, having only two voices in the broadcast is not enough and unfortunately, that’s why most people don’t listen to NWR as much as they used to, because of the lack of variety in the speaking voices. Also, no Tom and Donna either. Having only males is boring and I hope that some day, the ladies will get a turn to say something, besides any occasional announcements. Why not have them doing the marine forecast? After all, Donna did them on NWR, while Tom was the male voice. I also believe that the females should be doing the ID message, as opposed to the males doing everything. It would add more variety and let’s face it, a female voice is much more soothing and, they don’t have to be the bringer of bad news when simply giving the station ID. Besides, they’d provide more of a marker and if you hear them breaking up the monotony in the broadcast, you would hear them and depending on what their function would be, you would know how long it would take to hear the information you need to hear. For example: if the females did the station IDs, you would realize that it would be a transition from English to French. Or, if they were to do the marine forecasts and marine reports, you can look forward to what is next. With an only male cast, there is nothing interesting about the broadcast and no voice marker, except that the station ID is a sign of going from English to French. If it was only female voices on the broadcast, I would be saying much as I have said here, for the same reasons. I have always liked bands with more than one singer and that’s why I like a band such as Queen, or The Beatles. Even if all of the musicians provide their own distinctive voice to their instruments, along with an equally unique frontman, I like them. That’s where a band like Tool would come in. Anyway, I digress.
Do I hope that i-Notify becomes a failure? No! Do I wish for AVIPAD’s to stay on the network? No! Do I wish that all 4 voices were allowed to perform various functions, within the broadcast cycle on Weatheradio Canada? Yes! Will the broadcast as it is, grow on me? No, because of what I have said above and will say again.
I’m happy to have Tom back on Weatheradio but, he shouldn’t be the only English speaker on Weatheradio Canada. Just take a few listens to the test cycle from 2017 and you will see why I have posted here today. I also hope that the folks at Weatheradio Canada are listening and reading this and realize, that this comes from a long time listener, who knows all 4 voices well and knows what they are saying. I use either Tom or Ava, to speak various things on my iPhone and I enjoy going from one to the other, a apposed to having one voice reading out everything on the screen. After all, that could be why Apple had created a setting called “Activities” in the Accessibility settings and, for VoiceOver users on iPhones and iPads. If you have an Apple device, you can learn about what VoiceOver is and how it has helped myself and others who are blind and visually impaired navigate something with nothing but a screen.
To end off this post, let’s hope that by the time i-Notify has been installed across Canada by the end of 2021, that it sounds much better and with more voices on the broadcast. If it stays as it is now, I would rather keep AVIPAD’s and let it eventually die. Again, I don’t say this lightly and remember, this is coming from someone who has been loyal to Weatheradio Canada and has been looking forward, to i-Notify since I was given 2 voice samples in 2015.
Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter for May 1st 2021 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada.html Hello and welcome to the first issue of the newsletter for 2021. Did you have a great Christmas and holiday season? How about before then, in the fall when new COVID case numbers began rising again and we had to go into lockdown… or what ever some governments are calling it?
Like the August 2020 issue, I have decided not to number this one either because it is abbreviated, due to the inability to include any new CANWARN or SKYWARN news, other than virtual meetings. I did my taxes over Zoom and I would rather have taken the risk, to get them done normally, at my income tax clinic, but that is another story for another blog.
For this issue, to fill it out I have decided to insert a number of relevant articles from past issues and posts, which I think should be scene again, along with at least one or two new links. I wouldn’t normally rehash old material. However, because of the current circumstances (which are both related and unrelated to the pandemic) I will include some past articles here, which are just as relevant today as they were back when they were first published. But, I will put them here in an edited form, as I don’t wish to give a complete carbon copy, of the articles I have chosen here.
Since August 27th 2020 there has been a cloud hanging over the heads, of those of us who live in areas where Weatheradio Canada was announced to be decommissioned. Fortunately, the sky hasn’t fallen and the world hasn’t ended, as Toronto and the other 47 WXR’s are still burbling away. Some time soon there will hopefully be a message on the broadcast, encouraging those of us who listen regularly to participate in a survey, as the second phase of consultation with us will be underway. Hopefully, we not only turn out in large numbers (In order to participate) but also say the right things to encourage the powers that be to keep the network on the air and intact. If we do that, we can keep the network as it is and if anything, expanding and progressing.
I live in Toronto and it was one of the WXR’s on the hitlist and obviously, I find that rather foolhardy, because of the work which was done on November 19 and 20th of 2019 at the transmitter site. I will include it here, to help make the point of this matter and how it would be a waste, of both money and manpower, if Toronto was decommissioned after all the work had been done back then, with upgrading the software and of course, having to go up The CN Tower to do it. I was looking forward and still am, to hearing what i-Notify will sound like, when it goes live and all the pieces are put together. By the way, I have now given the definitive spelling of the name of the new software, in the last sentence. So, that is the final spelling and I will no longer spell “i-Notify” any other way, other than that.
By the way, I have a confession to make, about why the English and French Voices are both male (Tom and Nicholas) for the station IDs. I was asked in an email, Which voices would be best for them and I suggested those two, as I know what all four of them sound like. If you are a long time reader of the newsletter, you know how I know them and if not, let’s just say that I have all four of the voices and more, on my iPhone and I use them every day, in various situations. Besides, they and others help me navigate the phone, because of my disability. I hope that this will be temporary and there will be a switch to the female voices for the station IDs and both the RWT and RMT, when i-Notify goes live across the entire network. I also hope that everything will be arranged so that both voices are male or female in both languages, depending on what the box contains. For example: Tom and Nicolas doing: severe weather bulletins, public and marine forecasts, with Ava and Chantal doing the hourly reports, for both inland and marine conditions.
Anyway, I hope we all can enjoy the rest of spring as much as we can and hopefully, we can all get the shots in the arm so we can eventually be free to get out and mingle, like we are meant to do as social beings. There won’t be all that much new to include here but, I thought I would do something, instead of watching bus videos on Youtube all day. Anyway, enjoy reading and if you have any questions or feedback, you know how to contact me.
THE WATCHDOG REPORT If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call 1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA at nwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call 1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team at ec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook Group. You will find the link to it later in this issue and all issues of the newsletter. You can also email the author directly at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com and it will be passed on for you. Note from the author: I will mainly include items with a definitive time on their start to finish and ones with unknown starts or endings, I will of course include as well, but with a mention of them being unknown. Also, the reports mentioned are from August 7th 2020 to the present day, just so we are all not confused. After all, it has been 9 months since the last issue. On Friday, August 7, Toronto went into watchdog, after hours of data bins dropping off without updating, during Thursday evening. It was restored some time after 9:00 AM. Much the same thing had happened on Friday September 25th, as Toronto had gone into watchdog at 8:02 AM. It had come to this the same way as on August 7th and it was restored at 12:35 P.m. Also, sometime after Wednesday, September 23, St Catharines VAD 320 went off the air. As for when it will be restored, it’s not known exactly when it had gone off the air but, it won’t be restored for a while, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and public health restrictions. Maybe when they are loosened, any station in the same boat can be brought back to life and, any station set to have i-Notify installed will get it.
On Friday October 9th at around 8:15 PM, Rosseau went into watchdog and was restored, some time over the thanksgiving long weekend.
On Thursday Oc tober 22nd, many WXR’s in Ontario had gone into watchdog around 6:00 AM and they were restored around 9:57 AM… the same day.
On Monday October 26 at around 1:59 PM, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog and wasn’t restored until some time around 3:36 PM the same day.
On Friday November 6th at around 1:37 PM ET, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog and was out of it, by around 2:00 PM.
On Saturday January 9th at around 12:15 PM, Collingwood XMJ 316 had gone into watchdog and wasn’t restored until Sunday January 10th, just after 2:00 PM. In fact, 2 stations were stuck: Collingwood and TEMAGAMI CFE-261. They have both been restored since then!
On Sunday January 10th, Toronto XMJ 225 had lost all the bins in the configuration (for a few hours) until it was restored, around 2:30 PM.
The Normandale VFI-621 WXR was off the air from 5 pm EST January 11 2021 to 2 PM EST January 15th. There for, the RWT on January 13th did not happen.
On Friday February 5th, Collingwood XMJ 316 had gone into watchdog mode at around 2:25 AM and wasn’t restored until about 9:30 AM, the same day. Also, Toronto XMJ 225 also was on the way to being in watchdog, as bins had dropped off to the point of the only things playing were the station ID and the “current marine reports” prompt in both languages.
On a sidenote:
A few days previous to this outage, marine forecasts and hourly reports had been removed from the Collingwood WXR, dew to the public products being rather long and complicated, because of the rather specific regional forecasts. This has left little room for recording on the XMU’s and there for, this had to be removed. However, the prompt for the hourly marine reports had been on the broadcast, until it was made known that it was still present and was… taken off of the broadcast. The marine forecasts and reports have returned to the Collingwood WXR.
On Saturday February 13th) at around 8:00 AM, Kitchener XMJ330 went into watchdog mode and wasn’t restored until Tuesday, February 16.
On Thursday February 25th, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog mode at around 9:15 AM and wasn’t fully restored until just after 2:00 PM, the same day. Data took a long time to load and no reason was given, for the outage, except that new updates were disappearing as they were being issued to the software.
On Sunday, April 11, Rosseau VBT-629 had gone down but, unfortunately no time was able to be given as to when this had happened. It was restored on Monday, April 12 at around 8:45 AM.
On Sunday April 18th at around 7:15 AM, Collingwood XMJ 316 went into watchdog and wasn’t restored until some time during the afternoon.
On Monday April 19th, Collingwood XMJ 316 went into watchdog mode again. Not sure of what time it had gone down but, it had come back at 2:53 PM.
Something else which also should be spoken of here, is that when forecasts with any alerts in affect are played, there is normally a flag on the forecast. For example: “SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH IN AFFECT” and then on to the rest of the forecast. For some reason in Canada, all flags have disappeared and the only way to know that any such watch, warning or advisory is in affect is to listen through the broadcast, to when you hear a severe weather bulletin or, to go to the website or application, to see if there are any alerts in effect for your area. Here’s an example of how it used to sound, before January 1, 2021. https://youtu.be/t64xOKRLZis
Questions and Answers
The following were questions and answers which were asked and answered in October 2012, on the Weather Radio Net, which was a ham radio net which was created by me and active, from June 2012 to December 2013. Then, it was reactivated in 2015 for a few months. Besides my own, others had questions but, I failed to record them and I have the ones here, which appeared in issues 7 and 8. Peter Staples was the “Dissemination Specialist” for Ontario at the time and all the answers are from him, except where noted. Also, the answers given were up to date as of October 2012.
Question: How did Weatheradio Canada start and how did it evolve from what it was to today? It began during the latter sixties and early seventies in the United States. People along the border were listening in so we decided to open up a similar network in Canada. In 1977 the first station was launched in Vancouver. It spread to major cities in Canada quickly. In 1979 the first province-wide network was operational in Nova Scotia. It expanded greatly during 1980 to the 1990’s before a Program Review was conducted. In the early days, each weather radio was manually loaded by staff of the weather office in a studio using 8 track tapes with a direct line to one transmitter site. During the Program Review, weather offices were eliminated, and AVIPaDS was developed to streamline the process. In 2005-2006 Weatheradio Canada introduced SAME message ability. Question: What is the software used to generate the information that is heard on the network and how does it work? AVIPaDS (Automated Voice Interactive Processing and Distribution System) The text from forecasts, observations, watches and warnings, etc are parsed and converted into audio files by combining pre-recorded words and phrases in a voice database. These are then transferred by ftp or dial-up to Weatheradio/ATAD sites. The phrases are updated by two people for French and English Observation data is also converted into Inuit for far northern sites. However, there is a limited database of words and phrases. Question: What are the various VHF and UHF links for? Are they permanent? The main sites are broadcast in VHF frequencies which allow for SAME and 1050 Hz watch/warning alerts. Because of certain location limitations (telephone access, etc), some systems had their signal broadcasted via UHF link from a main XMU location to another VHF transmitter site (i.e. Windsor – Victoria Park to McGregor, Thunder Bay – AMOS to Mount Baldy). This will likely change if communications at the transmitter site become available. Some sites repeat via VHF to another repeater site (i.e. Pembroke to Renfrew) but we are planning on splitting these sites. Question: Since 2002 Weatheradio Canada has become bilingual. Is it possible to separate the French and English into different frequencies? The short answer is yes, they can be separated. However, this involves an almost doubling of the expenses as separate transmitter equipment is needed for separate language cycles. We would very much like to do this however; we are limited by budgetary allowances. Question: Why do we have to hear French on the Weatheradio network in predominantly English-speaking regions such as Southern Ontario? 90% of the population here is English speaking; the other 10% of French speaking people speak both English and French! Even in Northern Ontario where there is a greater population of French speaking people, most speak and understand both. The answer is that it is an official Bilingual issue. We must treat both official languages equally. So they both have to be on the transmission. Question: How does Specific Area Message Encoding work and what is involved in it? SAME message encoding provides a couple of extra bits of data to the broadcasting of watches and warnings. Both a SAME event code (i.e. Tornado Warning, Snowfall Warning, etc) and a CLC (Canadian Location Code) in Canada, also known as simply a SAME or FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) Code in the US are transmitted during a broadcast that will alert SAME enabled Weatheradio’s to activate, depending on the users input. Each Weatheradio is a bit different but most SAME enabled ones allow a user to program their CLC code into the Weatheradio so they will only be alerted for events in their area. This allows the broadcast footprint to get multiple watches and warnings out, but the listener doesn’t have to get alerted for every one – just what affects them. The AVIPaDS software encodes the data from watch/warning bulletins and sends these out over the air. Question: Why doesn’t the 1050 Hz tone sound inside a SAME message like it does for NOAA Weather Radio? When we set up the system we took into account that different user Weatheradio receivers behave in different ways when decoding SAME alerts. We took a general solution to the differences but it hasn’t always worked out. We are hoping in the next version of AVIPaDS we will have fixed this problem. Question: Could you explain what a contingency test is and how does it play into Weatheradio Canada’s various regional offices working together? We have five major regions across Canada with a specific level of resources and to make our systems redundant, we have set up contingency plans so that each region can back each other up (monitoring and repairing). Generally to do this, each region has access to all the hardware systems and software and the proper contacts for maintenance. We have done the occasional test (as in September 2012 between Ontario and Quebec) to make sure that the contingency plans do work. Question: What is watchdog and how does it work? The watchdog is a feature put on the Weatheradio in the past few years to cover outages. Previously, when a system became unreachable for loading updated data to it (because of communication outages), it was quite likely that the Weatheradio would continue to transmit. However, the information would rapidly become stale and out of date. It became evident that old data could be more troublesome than no data, so the watchdog feature would come into play. Listeners hearing a stale forecast may not realize it was old and they might be planning incorrectly! After three hours without updates, the Weatheradio would switch to a short cycle, with only the WXR ID and an outage message on it. That is what happens normally! In some cases, the data can get corrupted and gradually eliminated. So, after a few hours of this it goes into watchdog mode, without issuing an alert to the WX Radios listening to the local WXR. This way the users would realize that they would need to check other sources for weather information. Once new data is being loaded, the transmission would go back to normal. Question: Are there any plans to extend Weatheradio Canada to regions that don’t currently have this vital service? We use a business plan to expand the network and this plan generally follows the population patterns, so the larger the population, the more expansion. This sometimes is adjusted when these patterns change (think of summer cottagers and places where the population is seasonal) or on occasion when funding opportunities are available. Over the past five years there has been significant expansion into the far north of Canada due to funding provided by Transport Canada Search and Rescue. Currently, at least 93 percent of the Canadian population is within Weatheradio coverage. We will continue to expand as we have funding. While we hope to keep expanding, our current mandate has the priority of maintaining our current network. Question:Is there a timeline on what is going up and when? We are still trying to get some more transmitters out to cover a few gaps in coverage, but the going is slow. A proposed site in Shelburne Ontario fell through as the available tower was already overloaded with antennas. We are still hoping to get an alternative site going. We are also in the processes of splitting off some repeater systems and also looking for new sites. As previously mentioned, this is based on funding. Hopefully, we will have some better news soon. Question: Since 2007 the IDs were read out for the various transmitters with all the call signs and station names in them. Before then they were read out by the AVIPAD’s voices. Why doesn’t the AVIPAD’s voice read out the current IDs? The main reason is the general limitations of the AVIPADS vocabulary. In order to provide more detail, we had to get a bilingual person to record the ID messages. – This also brings us to the next generation of AVIPADS; as technology has advanced, text to speech software has become much better. We hope to soon be able to use a dedicated text to speech engine to produce the Weatheradio content. This will do great things for the service, allowing a virtually unlimited vocabulary and a much faster process. Question: I was contacted by someone asking what is the best Weather Radio that has the SAME feature built-in. He will be putting on an external antenna but he is in the Mount Forest area. I think he is on the fringe of reception. If he is on the fringe, I would suggest getting the Sangean CL-100. It has both the Weather Radio and an AM/FM broadcast receiver on it. The WX receiver in particular should be of great benefit because it is really hot and the manufacturer has designed it to be a really great sounding radio, both for pleasure and for emergency situations. Again, I would recommend it for people who are on the fringe of a transmitter. For a handheld model, I would recommend getting the BC346XT scanner and using it as a SAME radio. You can leave the stalk antenna on it and it will still perform well in doors. However, don’t hesitate to put on a longer external antenna for further reception outside or while in a vehicle.
Authors note:
The last question was one I had answered and it was asked of me, some time in 2013.
As a bonus, here’s a review of what is meant by loading, as in loading data on the network. Loading in Weatheradio is the transferring of audio files (forecasts, warnings, and hourly conditions) from the main system located at various sites across Canada and the US, to the remote systems that broadcast the actual content. This review focuses on Weatheradio Canada and the software it currently uses and will begin to utilize in the future, when it goes live.
Basically, the loading through AVIPAD’s is either done by telephone dial-up or FTP. Telephone Dial-up Connection is based upon an analogue type of data transfer. Think of it as hearing someone telling you the forecast and then you repeat it back. The dialer machine telephones the remote system and signals it to record. Then it plays the message while the remote system is recording it. Because of this method, any noise on the lines would be transferred to the remote machine and then reproduced when played out over the Weatheradio transmitter. The network method is digital, meaning that the messages are converted into a binary file, and then transferred over the network (via FTP) to the site, which then is able to play back the file over the air. In this method, there will be no added noise or anything else. In addition to the quality of the recorded file being better by FTP than dial-up, it also loads the remote system at much faster speeds than dial-up. In dial-up, it takes as long as the message plays: a 5 minute message takes 5 minutes to transfer. By FTP, the same message may take only 10 to 15 seconds to transfer with no loss of quality. Dial-up connections may take quite a while to load several messages, and is much slower.Despite the advantages of the FTP transfer, there are still a lot of remote systems that don’t have access to high- speed internet needed for efficient loading. Some remote systems are only accessible via phone lines. And just like telephone service outages (high winds knocking down wires, poles, etc.) there can be network outages as well.
Like NWR, with i-Notify, there will be no dial-up or FTP and it will all go through one system, where everyone who has access to it can monitor it for any problems, much like can be done now but, with an even stronger connection to all current Weatheradio transmitter sites. Of course, the voices will be different and there will be an infinite amount of room, for the cycle to go on as long as possible. For example: if forecasts are complicated enough to have separate 48 hour forecast for specific regions in the listening area, along with the weather round ups and marine forecasts, it is much more doable than with the current AVIPAD’s, because of recording space.
The following is a review of what had happened on November 19th and 20th 2019. That particular couple of days were when Toronto XMJ 225 was upgraded and tested, to have access to both the current Avipad’s and i-Notify. I will give you an outline of how things went (as I had experienced it) and if your WXR hasn’t been visited for the installation yet, you will have some sort of idea of what will happen and what you may hear. Before I do that, I will give you a modified version of what I had written on Facebook, on November 18th. Hi folks. As those of us who live in Toronto and listen to Weatheradio know, the WXR is still broadcasting but we haven’t had SAME alerts get through to it, since late July. Tomorrow, that is about to change, as people from Weatheradio Canada are here in town, to do some work on the transmitter, tomorrow and Wednesday. Here is how things are going to most likely happen. First of all, Toronto will be offline for a few hours and then, it will come back online again. Shortly after that, there will be a series of tests, with both voices and SAME and 1050 Hz tone alerts at different volumes. Something like this had happened back in 2006, when SAME was first introduced to Weatheradio Canada and was ready for use. Any downtime required for The installation in Ontario had occurred sometime in November 2004, during the weekend. The only time it would be interrupted was when a watch or warning was issued, for any severe weather that was forecasted to be in the area. As for Toronto, I think we lucked out and there was no need for an interruption of the installation. Also, the WXR’s in Ontario had remained alive throughout the weekend, in case of any severe weather bulletins being issued. As for the installation and test, it may continue into Wednesday and this may affect the RWT but, any SAME tests will be aalert tests so, anyone with a WX radio which flashes after 10 days of nothing being sent out can sleep in the knowledge that your radio won’t be flashing (or beeping) after these alerts go out. What this will mean is that Toronto will be ready for the launch of the new software, when everything is ready on both the RF end and through the telephone. There are still things to do after all of the transmitters are updated but I can certainly tell you that what will take place is another step towards an improved Weatheradio Canada. So, here is how things went on November 19th and 20th 2019. I made sure I had nothing on my plate, so I could monitor this for all of us. Ready? Tuesday November 19th 2019:
At around 9:07 AM, Toronto had been shut off and was not turned on again, until around 12:15 PM EST and had remained silent with dead air, until 1:07 PM. At that exact time, two of the new voices had generated a message, stating that this is a test of the new technology and they had just happened to be Tom for English and Nicolas for French. The time announced was correct, as I had checked it with my iPhone’s clock! At some point during the afternoon, there were some accidental SAME and 1050 Hz tone tests which had gone out. If you have bought the Sangean PR-D9W AM/FM weather alert radio from Radioworld, you may have noticed that the 1050 Hz tone alert didn’t get through, as the voice was quieter, before the installation. After the installation, it now works, as it is strong enough to break through the squelch. I say that because even though there wasn’t any static on the broadcast at home, it didn’t get through, unlike Buffalo and obviously, this has been rectified. I could tell you why, but I’m going to keep that to myself for now. However, if you know how repeaters work in ham radio and other networks, you can probably guess how and why things had changed for the better. During the time the new voices were being tested and before the broadcast had resumed to normal operations, the following pangram was sometimes repeated over the air, by Tom on both days of the installation. “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. Sadly, I never learned what a pangram was in school and now I know what they are, after doing a Google search. When the broadcast was restored with FTP back on the transmitter, a key part of the configuration (i-e) the Lake Simcoe forecast was missing and thanks to an email from myself, it had been brought back. Some time during the night, the WXR had died and needed to be brought back to life and, it was during the morning of November 20th 2019. Wednesday November 20th 2019: It was similar, but less eventful. There were interruptions and the Lake Simcoe forecast had once again vanished from the configuration. Obviously, I had to send out another email and it was soon brought back. Everything was done before 12:00 PM and thus, there was no conflict with the RWT, which had gone out for the first time in months.
The complete version of what had happened is in Issue 33 and you will find out why I had included it here, in a slightly edited form.
SPOTTER REPORTING TIPS For those who are new to the newsletter, this is for those who are either trained as CANWARN or SKYWARN spotters. However, these tips can be useful for anyone to follow, to help report severe weather to someone who is trained, such as myself. Besides, you could help save lives.
How to Report Amateur radio network (if applicable) – Amateur Radio Condition Condition Codes: Code Green – Severe Thunderstorm Watch Code Yellow – Severe Thunderstorm Warning or Tornado Watch Code Red – Tornado Warning in Ontario by email at storm.ontario@ec.gc.ca Twitter with #onstorm If you are CANWARN trained you should give the following information to the weather office in order to help them ground truth: Your name, CANWARN ID, contact number, – Where – you are located and the approximate location of what you are reporting, – Describe what you are witnessing/what you witnessed, the time of occurrence of the event and duration, its movement (where the phenomenon came from and where it is going). In the spring/summer severe weather season, please report the following: Hail (use coins to describe its size…dime, nickel, quarter, loonie for larger hail…golf ball etc.), Heavy rain that has resulted in local flooding, Damaging winds (damage from tree branches down to more significant tree or structural damage), Large scale rotation in a thunderstorm such as: Wall Cloud – Funnel Cloud, Waterspout and Tornado, Dense fog – visibility less than 1 km Note: if you are unsure of the rotation or presence of a wall cloud or funnel cloud…watch the area for a few minutes if it is safe to do so to verify the situation. For the fall/winter, please report the following: Dense fog (visibility less than 1 km), Any occurrence of freezing rain or freezing drizzle, Heavily accumulating snow (2 or more cm/hr), Whiteout conditions in snow/blowing snow (visibility near zero), Rapid freezing of water on road surfaces. For SKYWARN spotters, you should report: Tornadoes or funnel clouds (be very wary of look-alikes; watch for rotation) waterspouts, Wall clouds, especially if they are rotating Hail (Be specific with regard to size; however, YOU SHOULD NOT report MARBLE size) Winds (40 mph or greater; specify whether they are estimated or recorded), large branches downed (specify the diameter of the branch), Trees/power lines downed, Structural damage to buildings such as roof, windows, etc. Rainfall (1 inch or greater in an hour) (NOT a 1″/hr. rate for 10 minutes), 2 inches or greater storm total, Flooding — Streams/Rivers — also, when nearing bankful — Coastal — Street (Road Closures/Washouts, Cars Stuck due to flood waters. Minimum of 6″ of water covering an entire roadway or lane of a major route/highway). For Winter Weather you should report: Precipitation type change (rain to sleet/freezing rain/snow, when the change has “taken hold”), Thunder when it is accompanied by snow, 1/4″ radial ice accretion (from twig outward; not circumference), New Snowfall from the First 2 inches; every 2-3 inches thereafter, 1 inch per hour or greater. If it is less than 2 inches total, give the final total only Give final total: no partial reports please) Report any snow/sleet/freezing rain if not in NWS forecast. Please consult your local Amateur Radio club or CANWARN or SKYWARN group for their: email address, Twitter account or Facebook pages.
Review of how to access weather information and Weather Radio broadcasts
If you didn’t have a receiver that could hear the weather channels you could listen to the audio from Weatheradio Canada or NWR on TV. Years ago, you could listen to Weatheradio Canada on TV and that is how I discovered it. I live in Toronto and back in 1988, I had found and listened to the audio on the TV while the King City radar plays on the screen. Unfortunately, it is no longer on the air. If you don’t have a radio that receives the (7) weather channels and you do not live in an area, (where they have a transmitter on the am or fm broadcast band), you can get your weather on the phone. There are phone numbers throughout North America you can call that give you the weather information you need. These are known as ATADS or automated telephone answering devices. The phone numbers in Canada are available on the web, if you know where to look. Unfortunately, the ATAD is really a legacy service and it is being all but left behind by Smart phone apps, which we will get to shortly. Sadly, there are many regions in Canada without both an ATAD and Weatheradio Canada service such as far Northern Ontario. That is where an app like WeatherCAN or Météo come in handy. For those who live in the US, there are other apps which can help to keep you informed of any potential weather and weather alerts but, NWR is more reliable and especially in an emergency, where power could be down for days and cell phone towers could be down and out of commission. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here and we’ll get to that, at the end.
Weather or Weather Radio Apps This is a growing list and it needs more results for future reference. If you have idea’s for weather or Weather Radio apps which should be put into future issues of the newsletter, send an email to the author at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com. Right now these are iPhone apps only, because that is all we have at the moment. Your help is needed to expand it. Alertable by Public Emergency Alerting Services Inc https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/alertable/id1277488940?mt=8 Note: for android users there is an android version of this app, which you can find on the Google Play store. Weather Office Free by X2 Studios https://appsto.re/ca/–gXw.i This app provides weather and forecast information for both Canada and the US from Environment Canada and the National Weather Service respectively. In fact nearly all apps mentioned here provide information from one or both sources. There is a version you pay for but to me, it is the same as the free version. NOAA Weather Radio by Christopher Coudriet https://appsto.re/ca/R0LCy.i This app allows you to listen to NOAA Weather Radio and receive alerts for your county in the US. It would be nice if it also provided the same feature for Weatheradio Canada and Canadians too, as it provides some Canadian WXR’s as live streams. Weather Radio by WDT by Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. https://appsto.re/ca/5eBPy.i This app gives you NWS alerts and also pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone, when lightning is possibly detected in your local area or, in area’s you have selected. TuneIn Radio – Stream Live Radio by TuneIn https://appsto.re/ca/_7t-y.i This popular app allows you to listen to conventional, Internet and even some Weather Radio stations when and where available. you can even listen to podcasts of your favourite radio shows if you like and maybe even audiobooks, To help you pass the time in the monotony of a commute or while waiting in the waiting room for an appointment. WeatherCAN by Environment and Climate Change Canada https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/weathercan/id1334221563?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.gc.ec.weather_app_android.ops&hl=en_US Météo – Canadian Weather by North Bits Solutions Ltd. https://appsto.re/ca/vu0i3.i This is another app designed for Canadians and is available in both english and french. It is similar to the Degrees Pro app and some of the others on this list. It is also free, despite that it offers in app purchases. Atmosphérique Pro – Canadian Weather from EC by Quadrant Newmedia Corp. https://appsto.re/ca/ZcvgB.i https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/scanner-radio-police-fire/id498405045
This app is rather Self-explanatory, in that it allows us to hear scanner feeds from various police scanners, as well as Weather Radio.
This app helps keep you safe, dry, and save you time. Its weather coverage combines top-tier data, instant alerts, custom updates, and your detailed reports in one location.
Weather Gods by Weather Gods Ltd https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/weather-gods/id1041512978 This app is an interesting one, in that it provides weather alerts and plays sound affects too, so a lot of people who are blind appreciate it for its ease of use. However, it pushes weather alerts to the iPhone a few minutes late and that isn’t good, in a potential tornado situation where you may have less than 15 minutes to prepare and get into a safe place, to avoid being struck and killed by flying debris. However, it does push severe weather alerts so, if you wish to give it a try go ahead but I encourage you to use it with another app, like WeatherCAN, which is much faster and pushes alerts in a more timely manner. My Lightning Tracker & Alerts by JRustonApps B.V. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/my-lightning-tracker-alerts/id1175031987 This is another app which pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone but you have more control over how they are sent out, such as changing the distance and time duration between receiving a push notification from the app. Also, you have an option of changing the sound used to alert you of a lightning strike but it doesn’t notify you that it has been 30 minutes since the last lightning strike within 17 km of your current location. But, it still is a good app. The official Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter Twitter Account https://mobile.twitter.com/wxrnewsletter
Final Words
This is a different kind of post, in that almost all the material is from previously published works. The reason is because of the theme throughout it and it all leads up to this, redundancy is important for a lot of things, including how we get our weather. If you had a chance to take a glance at an earlier link, it says that you should have some redundant items such as: weather apps on your phone, Weather Radios of all shapes and sizes and even an alternative method of getting weather information, such as the old reliable telephone, with recorded weather information at a specific phone number. Even the Government alerts on our phones qualify under redundancy and the more we have, the better we are equipped at saving our own lives as well as others. I could have mentioned radio and TV, but they are so ubiquitous for so many years that they are almost like second nature, to just turn on the radio or a TV and watch or listen to a program, or music. If Weatheradio Canada needs to keep their systems redundant (in order to monitor any potential trouble on the network) we also should have more than one way of getting our weather and weather alerts.
Over the past couple of years (before the COVID-19 pandemic and as recently as last August) I had been hearing rumblings about the possibility of some Weatheradio Canada stations being taken off the air. Here are highlights from emails I had received around that time, including an email I had received from Weatheradio Canada, about this decision.
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is currently undertaking a consultation process to solicit feedback on the possible decommissioning of 48 of our Weatheradio Canada national network of 230 transmitters, which would get rid of about 20% of the current list of WXR’s, which are still currently broadcasting. Recently (as of August 2020) a letter was sent to representatives (mainly mayors) of communities within transmitter coverage areas providing opportunities for concerns to be raised.
The message which had been broadcasted on the transmitters of interest briefly stated the proposed decommissioning and provided contact information for listeners to give comments and feedback. For those who haven’t heard it, here it is in English, with Ava as the computerized voice. Apologies for the bad language you will hear at the end of this video. https://youtu.be/Ub6RApJREXs
The broadcast messages in both English and French were said to be a part of a broader feedback effort that aims to help determine the true usage and value of the service to Canadians. We recognize that in most urbanized areas, our weather information is now available to Canadians over many channels and we want to focus the Weatheradio resources where Canadians need such a service most, like remote or Northern areas, or areas with poor cellular service.
In preparing to rebalance our use of delivery channels, ECCC performed a detailed analysis in 2018 that looked at the existing gaps and redundancies in the weather services provided by ECCC, the availability of LTE-level cell phone service and high-speed internet accessibility as well as other key demographic, financial and technical factors. We pushed a survey out to Weatheradio listeners in 2017, solicited usage feedback from 7000 schools in 2019 who received Weatheradios in 2010, and have collected comments from our inboxes and various Weatheradio users at community events, trade shows and through social media. Very little feedback was received from many regions where Weatheradio service is available.
ECCC will use the current consultation process to better understand community concerns, where they have been expressed, and how best to address them. ECCC may also look for opportunities to collaborate with some local communities to sustain the service in some situations. We are already talking with some mayors about the future of the transmitter in their area.
ECCC continues to provide access to comprehensive weather information and alerts through the weather.gc.ca web site and through our mobile app, WeatherCAN, which has GPS-located notification functionality. When a watch, warning or statement is issued, updated or ended by our national alerting system, the alert is pushed out to all our dissemination systems simultaneously, including WeatherCAN and Weatheradio. There is no difference in alerting capacity except that WeatherCAN can geolocate people as they move and notify them of an alert for their area, while Weatheradio has specific coverage areas focussed around transmitters.
I had expressed concern that when cell phone services are interrupted or there is a power outage, Weatheradio can be essential for accessing weather information. Here is their reply to this fact. “While it is true that Weatheradio transmitters may continue to broadcast during such outages, uploading of the content relies on those same services that may be interrupted. After 4 hours without receiving new data, stations revert to “watchdog” status, until rebooted or new data arrives. Transmitters do have 4-6 hours of backup power but if the internet is down to that transmitter, it will not receive new information or alerts to broadcast.” That’s their opinion and I will leave it at that, for this paragraph. However, there is one correction that should be made and this is common knowledge to those who are listeners, in that it is three hours before affected Stations go into watch dog, not four.
for those of you who know who Bruce Jones is, he has offered his own opinions and I would definitely listen to what he says here, in the following paragraphs. Yes, he does work for Midland Radio but, he is also a meteorologist and knows a thing or two about weather emergencies, as he has done multiple videos on Facebook on how to plan for them. This is from email correspondence we had done in September 2020 and if you think about it, what he says about what could happen, is quite true and could happen in Canada. Did we all think that we were immune from a pandemic like the one we’re going through right now?
“So sorry to hear that ECCC is following through on their idea of cutting off Weatheradio Canada transmitters. I spoke with them last year and tried my best to discourage them from this foolhardy and very shortsighted idea. It would appear to me that the fine men and women who built the Weatheradio Canada network have all retired and have been replaced with a younger generation who do not understand the importance, reliability and trustworthiness of radio frequency communications.
Here in the states, all of these disasters have featured a massive collapse of the cell phone system that was supposed to alert or inform citizens:
Joplin, Missouri EF-5 tornado Moore, Oklahoma EF-5 tornado Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, and Sandy The Washington DC earthquake The Boston Marathon bombing California’s Camp Fire”
“Canada may not have as many short-fuse severe weather episodes as we do in the US, but it only takes one; or one manmade disaster like a refinery or pipeline explosion, chemical spill or radiological emergency. California counties are now embracing NOAA Weather Radio as a wildfire warning device because too many people have been burned alive relying solely on their cell phones for warnings and evacuation notices. Cell phones just don’t work in a major disaster.” “I have looked for my meeting notes from the ECCC conference call and I cannot find them, but it was Ken Macdonald who was the leader on the call. Essentially, Mr. Macdonald said they had done some “research” and when they asked for feedback from the public regarding use of WRC, they got very few responses back, especially in major metropolitan areas. Their feeling was, most Canadians are getting their weather bulletins from their cell phones and are happy with that device and unwilling to use WRC.”
“I explained to him the numerous failures of our cell system in major disasters. He said Canada doesn’t have the same number of short-fuse weather situations as the US. I mentioned the Cascadia Subduction Zone and the potential for a large earthquake in Vancouver. I told him in Los Angeles, they encourage people to have FRS/GMRS handhelds to be able to communicate after a big quake, because they expect most cell towers to be out of commission and the few that are still operable will be taken over by emergency management. So in LA County, there are lots of citizens groups and neighborhood groups….even in Beverly Hills….that have purchased GMRS handhelds and every Thursday night the various fire stations in LA County Fire do a roll call and these citizen groups can call in and test their radios.”
“Speaking of California, take a listen to this YouTube video from California Office of Emergency Services. I worked with Lois Miller to set her up with GMRS radios, including our MXT400 units, which is a 40-watt GMRS transceiver….illegal in Canada. Lois and her neighbors developed their own mobile radio alerting network because during the horrific Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people, communications were worthless. Here is the link to the video:”
“I told Mr. Macdonald that if they decommission transmitters and rely solely on cell phones, they are heading for trouble and unnecessary deaths.”
“I work with a lot of emergency managers here in the US. One of them is an emergency manager trainer and when she does tabletop training exercises, the first thing she does is to ask everyone in the room to hold up their cell phone. When everyone has their phone in the air, she announces, “The cell phone system has just crashed, and what you’re holding in your hands is nothing but a brick. Put down your bricks and let’s begin the exercise.” And then they start the emergency management exercise, from the point of view that cell phones are worthless. This is being done for good reason. The cell system IS worthless in big events. This has been proven time and time again, despite the cell phone industry adding new, even bigger capacity. They simply have NO system which is capable of handling 100% of the phones within range of a working cell tower. And zero system capability when their tower is down.”
“I am 65 years old and in 1961, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, my father was Aircraft Commander of a B-52 stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, TX. At one point the US and Russia were so close to nuclear war that the B-52’s were fully loaded with nukes, sitting at the end of the runway with engines running. My father told me he and his co-pilot took turns keeping their feet on the brakes. Given the “go” signal, they would have released the brakes and throttled up all eight engines for a bombing run on Russia. During this time he regularly flew Chrome Dome missions up across Labrador, Greenland, the NWT, and Alaska, simulating a real bombing run on Moscow. They would turn back somewhere beyond the North Pole, the “failsafe” point.”
“In the current world situation, we are not far from this very same predicament. As frightening as it may be, a nuclear confrontation is not a far-fetched idea, and could happen quickly. I pointed out to Mr. Macdonald that missiles and nuclear bombers would be coming over and across Canada. In such a situation, does anyone in their right mind think the cellular phone system and the Internet would be able to handle all the traffic from the hundreds of millions of people who would be desperate for life-saving information? We MUST maintain these radio-frequency alerting systems, or we will suffer grave consequences.”
“Weatheradio Canada’s lack of listeners may be due in part to a lack of promotion by ECCC. I have gone on ECCC’s web site and information about WRC is hard to find. I have gone on the web sites of provincial and local emergency management and there is ZERO mention of WRC. I was at a disaster management conference in Toronto last year and met students who had just graduated with their “Master of Disaster” master’s degrees in emergency management. None of them knew ANYTHING about Weatheradio Canada. At this conference and another I attended in Vancouver I was dumbstruck by how few people in the emergency management field knew about or took advantage of WRC. I will also add that I met some who were enthusiastic supporters of WRC and themselves could not understand why it was not better utilized.”
“So the issue is: in Canada, where you don’t get as many short-fuse weather warnings, is a radio frequency alerting service worth the money your taxpayers are putting into it? On a day-by-day basis ECCC is saying “no”. But in disaster preparedness we try to get people to invest their money in supplies, water, food, and emergency kits BEFORE they need them. What ECCC is doing is making the same mistake the average person does when we ask them to prepare. They say, “Well, preparedness is too expensive. And I haven’t had any disasters, so I think I am okay for now.” History shows this is a short-sighted mistake that frequently leads to dire and deadly consequences.”
As for the survey in 2017, I wasn’t informed of such a thing and the only one I knew of (before the previous one in 2019) was done in late spring and the summer of 2018. I had talked about it in a previous post and if I had known about the 2017 survey, you can bet I would be contributing to it and I think that any and all surveys should be made available to everyone and not just a select group of people. If you go the latter direction, you risk getting misleading results, such as that there are not a lot of people, who use this service. This is untrue and there are in fact, people (from all walks of life) who rely on it, such as those who are boaters, farmers, ham radio operators involved with either CANWARN or SKYWARN and even those who are disabled, among others who have a general interest in both networks. After all, as the author of the newsletter and the blog, I am blind from birth and I’ve mentioned how I had discovered Weatheradio Canada when I was 14 years old, going on 15.
As I had mentioned before, Toronto was on the list of WXR’s to be killed off and yes, there is excellent cell phone coverage throughout the city but, if a service provider has an outage that could be trouble. The issue is redundancy and also, public safety and if Weatheradio Canada in Toronto is eliminated, how are people who may not want a smart phone app going to get detailed weather? They may not even own a TV and have no plans to purchase one in the future. Maybe, they are disabled and are blind, like me and want to be informed, but can’t be, because the local area has no WX radio coverage. The telephone ATAD’s are great but, they do not push severe weather alerts to landline phones and do not call people back, when an alert is issued. Also, if you have an app like WeatherCAN, it has its own problems and not entirely of the app itself. For example: I could be riding on the subway and going out of range of wi-Fi, just at a critical moment when an important severe weather alert (Which affects me directly) is issued. How will that save my life? Also, what if I had to go without Internet for days, including the use of data, for some reason? I wouldn’t be able to use WeatherCAN and I’d be in trouble, if a significant weather event had been warned of and I didn’ know about it, because of being off the grid. Yes, I have batteries and crank radios but even those things don’t last forever. With a crank radio, there is a battery in it which relies on either the cranking motion or, regular AC Power if people choose to plug-in the unit to the wall outlet. However, if you have no way of accessing AC power, you can’t recharge batteries except for cranking and who wants to crank all day long, in order to get critical information about a significant emergency which is affecting them directly?
With both NOAA Weather Radio and Weatheradio Canada, I would have more security in the knowledge, that I would be informed promptly, of any weather alerts, which would open up my radio. Having said that, having the redundancy of both Weatheradio Canada and apps like WeatherCAN is important, because we need multiple resources, for finding out whether information and weather alerts. That’s why we have things like radio and TV, so those who want to watch TV or listen to the radio can hear the news either way. It may be different depending on The type of media but, you are still being informed of the news. The same is true with weather apps and Weather Radio, which can work together, to inform everyone of any impending weather danger to life and property. How weather information is disseminated may be different but, the intention is the same and the main thing here, is to protect health and save lives. Isn’t that what we have been told we should be doing, by various levels of Government throughout the pandemic? In the case of Weather Radio, the reason for the broadcasts are to monitor for any severe weather emergencies and everything else is just kinda filler, in a sense. It’s important to have everything working together, so if one goes down we can utilize the other, to keep us informed.
One more thing I should mention, is that I put the Toronto upgrade here as a review, to lead to the following question. Why go through all the trouble of driving to Toronto, bringing tools, sleeping in hotels for a couple of nights and going up the CN Tower to do the upgrade, when you could be possibly tearing it down? This seems like a waste of time as well as money and manpower. If politics plays this, it shouldn’t even be in the discussion. Yes, this is a service run by our federal government but, the safety of all should trump any politics involved in the management of this vital service, which can save lives and at the same time, can tell you that it will be a nice day today outside. Not everyone has a TV or a smart phone and we can’t just leave people behind, for the sake of politics.
After all that, I’m going to end this post by saying that we should stay healthy and safe and have a great summer, whatever it brings. Hopefully we can all get outside again and mingle like the social beings we are.
Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter Issue 33 for February 1st 2020 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada.html Hello and welcome to the first issue of the newsletter for 2020. Did you have a great Christmas and holiday season? Are you enjoying the winter, where ever you are? Frankly, I’m sick of it, as the typical winter type of weather had started some time in November and I really hope we get an early spring, as it is a year ending in 0. During the last 3 of them, we had an early warming to make it feel like May… in March. In the case of 2010, it would get warmer each day, until it was spring jacket type weather and it was a rather long season too.
As for Weatheradio Canada and NOAA Weather Radio, things seem to be much the same, with Weatheradio Canada moving ahead with the installation of iNotify, or how ever it is spelled. I’ve spelled it as I did in the last sentence but, other people have spelled it differently so, I’m not sure what the correct letters would be, making up the name of the new software. Toronto had been upgraded and I was lucky enough to meet with Marc-Antoine Chabot from Weatheradio Canada, who has contributed to some recent issues and I won’t talk about what we went on about but, I will tell you that he knows that I have as much access to the new voices, as he does at work and maybe more. After all, I could make either Tom or Ava say what ever I wish and yes, I’ve heard both voices sware. This is because I would have them read articles off the internet, whether Wikipedia or some such, about some of my favourite famous people, whether they be musicians, actors, comedians or whatever. This means that depending on what I am reading, the occasional four letter words maybe in the text and so, I get to hear that. Anyway, he did the upgrade for the Toronto WXR during the next couple of days and I will talk about it below, as it is now prepared for the eventual launch of iNotify, or I-Notify, as it had been told to me, in emails. To end off the opening comments, I hope you enjoy this issue and have a safe rest of the winter and stay warm. It will be interesting to see how spring will arrive in Canada this year, as it is a 0 year and it had come early during years ending in 0, with varying degrees of results for the rest of the season… and for the year. I am looking forward to what is to come for us this year and you know what? it will be summer before we know it.
THE CANWARN/SKYWARN REPORT CANWARN (CANadian Weather Amateur Radio Network) is a volunteer organization of amateur radio operators who report severe weather and damage reports to Environment Canada when they see it. Weather reports from amateur radio operators help confirm on the ground what satellites and radars see in the atmosphere. The information gathered from CANWARN is also used to update and fine tune weather warnings, fill in gaps in current observing networks and is also valuable in forensic storm analysis. When Environment Canada issues severe weather watches or warnings, they may alert the CANWARN volunteer Net Controllers in the affected areas. The volunteer Net Controllers contact other CANWARN members on the amateur radio, tell them a watch or warning has been issued and ask them to report signs of approaching severe weather. In the US SKYWARN is the American counterpart to CANWARN in Canada and the purpose for it is exactly the same. For this section of the newsletter, we will explore how different CANWARN and SKYWARN groups operate in their local region, from time to time. There may be some SKYWARN information from meteorologists in this issue and there will be some tips on how to report severe weather for both CANWARN and SKYWARN. We may not agree with everything that is written here, but it is important to hear from others to see how different groups operate throughout North America. I am still looking for any information, on CANWARN and or, SKYWARN training schedules, outside of Ontario. Unfortunately, I have not received any emails from meteorologists or my fellow spotters, as to when sessions will be conducted. Of course, I will post them as a standalone blog post outside the newsletter timeline and when ever a new schedule update is released. I have given my email address many times throughout the newsletter and any help on that is certainly welcome. Many thanks in advance.
In the past, I have included a message from Geoff Coulson, who was a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada, based out of Toronto and who also managed the CANWARN storm spotter program in the province of Ontario. He has since retired but, had returned on a part-time basis to help out Gerald Cheng at sessions (here and there) during last years training session season. Also, to put together the online training and most likely, this years sessions will have some material, talking about what is to come, on that front. Since Geoff has retired and is concentrating more on the online CANWARN training, I figured I would do the reminder in the February issues of the newsletter, from now on. Admittedly, I will be borrowing heavily from Geoff’s last annual message (which did not appear in the February 2018 newsletter) and I will add my own comments, when necessary. Geoff had been doing these messages since 2012 and Gerald Cheng has taken his place, in his job title. However, I have decided not to give him the job of composing a message for the newsletter. I guess my main reason for this is because I want to include all of Canada in the reminder and hopefully, I can do a good job with this, as I have limited knowledge of CANWARN groups across Canada, despite help from meteorologists outside of Ontario in past years. I haven’t heard from any of them and I am out of touch with whom all of the current Warning Preparedness Meteorologists are, across Canada. Anyway, here is what I have managed to put together so, here goes. As we all know, CANWARN members are volunteers from all walks of life and Amateur radio operators comprise the core of the CANWARN program with other volunteers coming from all levels of government, emergency managers/responders and those with a passion for the weather. This of course, includes everyone who administrates various groups on Facebook which relate in one way or another, to weather. CANWARN volunteers watch the skies year-round for telltale signs of severe storms and relay significant information, in real-time, to the Storm Prediction Centres located across Canada. In the winter-time this can include reports of significant snowfall amounts, poor visibilities in fog or blowing snow and occurrences of freezing rain. In the spring and summer months, reports can be sent in on the appearance of funnel clouds or tornadoes or the occurrence of large hail, damaging winds or flooding rains. There are now thousands of CANWARN volunteers across Canada and many of these volunteers have attended a training session in the last few years.
Until now, CANWARN training sessions in Ontario have been held across the province in the April to June timeframe. Training sessions are normally held during evenings and on weekends with the sessions lasting between 2 and 2.5 hours. There is no cost to attend a training session. The spring training schedule is normally released in either late March or, early April. Last year, there was a drastic drop in sessions being done, dew to resource pressures and there may be less of them this year. Obviously… I hope not!
As for the rest of Canada, sessions may also be held around the same time, altho some sessions have been known to be held in March. For example: sessions in parts of Manitoba have happened in early March, according to what I’ve been told from reliable sources. Some sessions have also been held as late as early July and I found this out, just before the newsletter was even a thought. However, I can’t exactly speak to how the rest of Canada may, or may not handle CANWARN as I live in Ontario and have had only so much contact with other meteorologists from other provinces, with updates on the latest sessions. However, I am trying. The explosion of the use of social media, like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to report severe weather in recent years, have made some question the continuing importance of CANWARN. While the Weather Centre monitors social media closely, they are often required to do some checking before using social media reports. However, reports from identified CANWARN members are given more weight immediately. The forecasters realize that these reports are coming from people who understand the types of weather they want to hear about and they know we have received training in what to spot and report. Many of you reading this newsletter that live in Canada may already be a CANWARN member and, if so, thank you for your participation, along with myself and others. For those of you who aren’t a member but are interested in learning more about the program or who would like to be placed on the training notification distribution list, feel free to contact those of us who administrate the weather related FB groups, (if you are on Facebook). We would be happy to direct you to information about CANWARN and of course, the training schedules will appear here as standalone posts, outside the newsletter timeline.
As for information about training schedules this year, we’ll just have to wait and see how much things may be cut back and thus, less sessions this year. Roomers have it, that there may not even be one at Environment Canada HQ in Toronto and if so, that would be bad. Altho, we will eventually be directed to the online training and hopefully, this will be ready some time this year, as Geoff Coulson had said in the August 2019 issue.
SPOTTER REPORTING TIPS How to Report Amateur radio network (if applicable) – Amateur Radio Condition Condition Codes: Code Green – Severe Thunderstorm Watch Code Yellow – Severe Thunderstorm Warning or Tornado Watch Code Red – Tornado Warning in Ontario by email at storm.ontario@ec.gc.ca Twitter with hashtag #onstorm If you are CANWARN trained you should give the following information to the weather office in order to help them ground truth: Your name, CANWARN ID, contact number, – Where – you are located and the approximate location of what you are reporting, – Describe what you are witnessing/what you witnessed, the time of occurrence of the event and duration, its movement (where the phenomenon came from and where it is going). In the spring/summer severe weather season, please report the following: Hail (use coins to describe its size…dime, nickel, quarter, loonie for larger hail…golf ball etc.), Heavy rain that has resulted in local flooding, Damaging winds (damage from tree branches down to more significant tree or structural damage), Large scale rotation in a thunderstorm such as: Wall Cloud – Funnel Cloud, Waterspout and Tornado, Dense fog – visibility less than 1 km Note: if you are unsure of the rotation or presence of a wall cloud or funnel cloud…watch the area for a few minutes if it is safe to do so to verify the situation. For the fall/winter, please report the following: Dense fog (visibility less than 1 km), Any occurrence of freezing rain or freezing drizzle, Heavily accumulating snow (2 or more cm/hr), Whiteout conditions in snow/blowing snow (visibility near zero), Rapid freezing of water on road surfaces. For SKYWARN spotters, you should report: Tornadoes or funnel clouds (be very wary of look-alikes; watch for rotation) waterspouts, Wall clouds, especially if they are rotating Hail (Be specific with regard to size; however, YOU SHOULD NOT report MARBLE size) Winds (40 mph or greater; specify whether they are estimated or recorded), large branches downed (specify the diameter of the branch), Trees/power lines downed, Structural damage to buildings such as roof, windows, etc. Rainfall (1 inch or greater in an hour) (NOT a 1″/hr. rate for 10 minutes), 2 inches or greater storm total, Flooding — Streams/Rivers — also, when nearing bankful — Coastal — Street (Road Closures/Washouts, Cars Stuck due to flood waters. Minimum of 6″ of water covering an entire roadway or lane of a major route/highway). For Winter Weather you should report: Precipitation type change (rain to sleet/freezing rain/snow, when the change has “taken hold”), Thunder when it is accompanied by snow, 1/4″ radial ice accretion (from twig outward; not circumference), New Snowfall from the First 2 inches; every 2-3 inches thereafter, 1 inch per hour or greater. If it is less than 2 inches total, give the final total only Give final total: no partial reports please) Report any snow/sleet/freezing rain if not in NWS forecast. Please consult your local Amateur Radio club or CANWARN or SKYWARN group for their: email address, Twitter account or Facebook pages.
November 19th and 20th 2019
These are the days in which Toronto XMJ 225 was upgraded and tested, to have access to both the current Avipad’s and the new software. I will give you an outline of how things went (as I had experienced it) and if your WXR hasn’t been visited for the installation yet, you will have some sort of idea of what will happen and what you may hear. Before I do that, I will give you a modified version of what I had written on Facebook, on November 18th.
Hi folks. As those of us who live in Toronto and listen to Weatheradio know, the WXR is still broadcasting but we haven’t had SAME alerts get through to it, since late July. Tomorrow, that is about to change, as people from Weatheradio Canada are here in town, to do some work on the transmitter, tomorrow and Wednesday. Here is how things are going to most likely happen.
First of all, Toronto will be offline for a few hours and then, it will come back online again. Shortly after that, there will be a series of tests, with both voices and SAME and 1050 Hz tone alerts at different volumes. Something like this had happened back in 2006, when SAME was first introduced to Weatheradio Canada and was ready for use. Any downtime required for The installation in Ontario had occurred sometime in November 2004, during the weekend. The only time it would be interrupted was when a watch or warning was issued, for any severe weather that was forecasted to be in the area. As for Toronto, I think we lucked out and there was no need for an interruption of the installation. Also, the WXR’s in Ontario had remained alive throughout the weekend, in case of any severe weather bulletins being issued.
As for the installation and test, it may continue into Wednesday and this may affect the RWT but, any SAME tests will be aalert tests so, anyone with a WX radio which flashes after 10 days of nothing being sent out can sleep in the knowledge that your radio won’t be flashing (or beeping) after these alerts go out. What this will mean is that Toronto will be ready for the launch of the new software, when everything is ready on both the RF end and through the telephone. There are still things to do after all of the transmitters are updated but I can certainly tell you that what will take place is another step towards an improved Weatheradio Canada. So, here is how things went on November 19th and 20th 2019. I made sure I had nothing on my plate, so I could monitor this for all of us. Ready?
Tuesday November 19th 2019:
At around 9:07 AM, Toronto had been shut off and was not turned on again, until around 12:15 PM EST and had remained silent with dead air, until 1:07 PM. At that exact time, two of the new voices had generated a message, stating that this is a test of the new technology and they had just happened to be Tom for English and Nicolas for French. I wanted all 4 voices to be represented but, it didn’t work out for me. “Boohoo!” Anyway, the time announced was correct, as I had checked it with my iPhone’s clock.
At some point during the afternoon, there were some accidental SAME and 1050 Hz tone tests which had gone out. If you have bought the Sangean PR-D9W AM/FM weather alert radio from Radioworld, you may have noticed that the 1050 Hz tone alert didn’t get through, as the voice was quieter, before the installation. After the installation, it now works, as it is strong enough to break through the squelch. I say that because even though there wasn’t any static on the broadcast at home, it didn’t get through, unlike Buffalo and obviously, this has been rectified. I could tell you why, but I’m going to keep that to myself for now. However, if you know how repeaters work in ham radio and other networks, you can probably guess how and why things had changed for the better.
During the time the new voices were being tested and before the broadcast had resumed to normal operations, the following pangram was sometimes repeated over the air, by Tom on both days of the installation. “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. Sadly, I never learned what a pangram was in school and now I know what they are, after doing a Google search. However, if you want me to construct a pangram, I am not quite that skilled at that. Anyway, I digress.
When the broadcast was restored with FTP back on the transmitter, a key part of the configuration (i-e) the Lake Simcoe forecast was missing and thanks to an email from myself, it had been brought back. Some time during the night, the WXR had died and needed to be brought back to life and, it was during the morning of November 20th 2019.
Wednesday November 20th 2019:
It was similar, but less eventful. There were interruptions and the Lake Simcoe forecast had once again vanished from the configuration. Obviously, I had to send out another email and it was soon brought back. Everything was done before 12:00 PM and thus, there was no conflict with the RWT, which had gone out for the first time in months. I had documented that in previous posts (outside the newsletter timeline) containing the reports for both Toronto and St Catharines and occasionally, another WXR and people were obviously happy to hear the test again, including myself.
As for the SAME an 1050 Hz tone and voice tests, they weren’t done at different volumes and in a way, it doesn’t bother me all that much. Why would they adjust the volume of the broadcast? Just for kicks? I don’t think so!
As for the reception of the Toronto WXR after the installation, people were generally pleased and one person had remarked that they could actually hear it better and wondered, if the power was increased. I don’t know and I had never thought to ask but, I may do so some time, out of curiosity. I was very happy, with how things had gone and despite the slight sound quality degradation, I don’t mind it, as it is still understandable from a distance. It will surely help the new voices sound more the same and at a set level on the network. As some people had noted, when earlier tests had occurred, back in April 2017, the voices were quieter and with the installation, that concern can be put to rest. This makes me more optimistic about how everything will sound, no matter what voices are being used for various boxes in the configuration, when the new software will be launched all across Canada.
Ever since then, things had gone relatively well, with only a couple of outages and thanks to some quick emails, some close calls were avoided. There had been instances where data hadn’t loaded for updates before and a couple days after Christmas. Hopefully, we will see the launch of the new software come to fruition, sooner rather than later. I am excited to learn what voices will be saying what, in specific boxes and I hope, that all 4 voices will get the chance to be heard.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again, I have a lot of access to them and I have done what I can, to listen to each one read out weather information, which is pertinent to the broadcast. If I had the scripts for every single transmitter’s configuration annd all of the information we hear, I would have an even better idea, of which voices sound best in certain situations. For example: severe weather alerts in either language. You don’t want a voice which sounds happy, when a potential storm is coming. Right? However, I only have a limited amount of access to what we hear and how it is presented to us, over the air. But, I will be waiting with baited breath, to hear when things switch over and hearing reactions from those, who may not use the voices every day. After all, the English speaking voices are American and some words are pronounced a bit differently. For example: Tom pronounces the word “flurries” different than Ava does and she pronounces it normally to us. With cities, towns and regions it may be another source for haters to rag on them. However, I have been told that Weatheradio Canada is working on that too.
As for myself, I’ve said it before and here it is again. Either Tom or Ava are essential to my use of knowing my way around an iPhone and others who have iPhones, probably don’t know about the availability of the voices. Their only contact with computerized voices is either through Siri or Alexa. They may not know that they can download and use all 4 voices slated to be on Weatheradio Canada, amongst others. However, they may have heard one or two of them, through GPS and even some transit systems. For example: Go Transit uses Ava to announce the stops on the trains and she is the English speaking voice you hear, when calling their IVR telephone system. As for the other French speaking voice on that line, I don’t think it is Chantal, as I can spot that voice almost anywhere.
One more thing I should mention here is that there was concern over Ava and how she sounds on the Continuous Marine Broadcasts and I can tell you, that what you here is all copy and paste. If you listen to the entire broadcast and you notice that some words and fraises are louder or quieter than others. Apparently, you can do that by manipulating the text to either different colors or under lines, or anything at all which may change the voice. I’m not entirely sure but, I’m guessing that’s what you can do. Anyway, I’m just going to sit back and wait to hear how things sound, when the new software is sprung upon us.
THE WATCHDOG REPORT If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call 1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA at nwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call 1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team at ec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook Group. You will find the link to it later in this issue and all issues of the newsletter. You can also email the author directly at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com and it will be passed on for you. Note from the author: I will mainly include items with a definitive time on their start to finish and ones with unknown starts or endings, I will of course include as well, but with a mention of them being unknown.
On Monday November 25th at around 12:15 AM AST, the entire Atlantic region had gone down, either in watchdog mode or had stopped broadcasting voice data altogether. However, it was all restored after noon AST on Monday November 25th. On Sunday December 1st at around 10.15 AM, all of Ontario went into watchdog and the network wasn’t restored there, until around 7:35 AM the next morning.
On Thursday December 5th, Myles Keleman reported the following in the NOAA Weather Radio and Weatheradio Canada Facebook group. “Station XLM537 is currently looping a “technical difficulties” message. Don’t know how long it’s been. I just discovered it.” However, it came back early the next morning because somebody reported it directly. On Monday December 9th during the afternoon, all of the Atlantic region had gone down and wasn’t restored until Tuesday December 10th, around 1:20 PM ADT.
Before Christmas, Collingwood XMJ 316 was broadcasting a dead carrier and the problem was also fixed, before Christmas. It was spotted during the previous week and it was fixed on December 23rd.
On January 8th 2020, London XLN 470 had gone into watchdog, some time during the morning and wasn’t restored until some time in the evening.
On Wednesday January 15th, the entire Atlantic region was down and wasn’t fully restored, until some time on Thursday January 16th.
On Saturday, January 18, Toronto XMJ 225 Went into watchdog mode and was not restored until Monday January 20th at 8:08 AM, after broadcasting a dead carrier for 11 minutes. This was a situation, where data wasn’t loading to be updated and everything had simply dropped off, until the only things left repeating were the station ID message and the canned messages for the words “Current Marine Reports” in both English and french. This is much like how Toronto had gone into watchdog, from July 2013 until September 2014, which I had documented in earlier issues of the newsletter.
Weather Nets On Ham Radio from Daryl Stout WX4QZ a) VoIP Skywarn Hurricane Prep Net — Meets at 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, 6pm Mountain, 5pm Pacific Time, on the WX_TALK Echolink Conference Server…Echolink Node 7203, and IRLP Node 9219. During the off-season hurricane months from December through May, the net meets on the FIRST SATURDAY of the month ONLY. During the Atlantic Hurricane Season, from June through November, the net meets WEEKLY, at 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, 6pm Mountain, and 5pm Pacific Time. Also, note that on the first Saturday of December, the net is ONE HOUR EARLIER…at 7pm Eastern, 6pm Central, 5pm Mountain, and 5pm Pacific Time. This is so at the conclusion of Skywarn Recognition Day, stations don’t have to wait for the net to occur. Further details are at http://www.voipwx.net b) Southeast US D-Star Weather Net — Meets at 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central, 7pm Mountain, and 6pm Pacific, every Sunday night, on Reflector 4, Port A. The net also meets on the Southeast US D-Star Weather Net Ratflector on D-Rats. Further details are at http://www.dstarinfo.com/se-d-star-wx-net.aspx Lastly, stations can get a list of selected D-Star Nets during the week by sending an email to me at wx1der@gmail.com — and again, a list of selected Echolink Nets is at http://http://www.theweatherwonder.com/elk.htm Daryl Stout, WX4QZ, Net Control Southeast US D-Star Weather Net Certified Skywarn Severe Storrrm Spotter Where toPurchase Weather Radios Weather Radios can be purchased at various electronics stores that specialize in radios and other equipment such as: CB World at http://www.werecb.com/, Universal Radio at http://www.universal-radio.com/, Radiooorld at http://www.radioworld.ca/, Burnaby Radio at http://www.burnabyradio.com/, Ambient Weather at http://www.ambientweather.com/, and many more retailers throughout North America. Best Buy, which caters more to General consumer Electronics such as, Smart phones, tablets, MP3 players etc. However, they also Carrie some Weather Radios, in both Canada and the US. http://www.bestbuy.com/ also in Canada http://m.bestbuy.ca/defaultpage.aspx?lang=en and if you want results from a search on Weather Radios, https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/Search/SearchResults.aspx?query=Weather+radio Or, the free iOS app Best Buy Canada by Best Buy Canada Ltd https://appsto.re/ca/_2iex.i If you want more information about the app, check The developer website for more information. http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/bestbuyapps.aspx When planning to purchase your first Weather Radio, it is highly recommended to look for the Public Alert identification logo. Weather Information on the Internet Suggested weather sites to visit as follows; In Canada the current websites url is http://www.weather.gc.ca Want to get your weather in the US? Go to http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ Weatheradio Canada webpage at http://www.ec.gc.ca/weatheradio NOAA Weather Radio webpage at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. DX Info Centre at http://www.dxinfocentre.com/, to hear what Weather Radio sounds like before buying your first receiver, visit YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/ or just use Google to watch or listen to Youtube video or audio. The NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards Newsletter is published four times a year. There is some seasonal information to notify recipients of additional weather information available to them that they may not know about (most of which can be found on the NOAA Watch web site http://www.noaawatch.gov/ ). At this site you can also subscribe to various weather feeds. The rest of the newsletter remains relatively unchanged due to outreach requirements. The current newsletter is available at the Noaa Weather Radio website http://www.weather.gov/nwr/news.htm. At this time, there is no newsletter mailing list to subscribe. If you have additional questions, please feel free to e-mail answers@noaa.gov, here is the link to the answers website; http://findanswers.noaa.gov/noaa.answers/consumer/search.asp. NOAA and Weatheradio Canada group on Facebook, https://m.facebook.com/groups/weatheradio/ WXtoIMG at http://www.wxtoim.com/downloads/, Digital Atmosphere at http://www.weathergraphics.com/da/ WebEx http://www.freewebs.com/ve1jbl/canwarn.htm NWS Taunton Amateur Radio SKYWARN Station home page at http://www.wx1box.org The Maritime Amateur (Ham Radio for Maritimers by Maritimers) http://www.maritimeamateur.ca VoIP Hurricane Prep Net – Saturday 9pm Atlantic Time / http://www.voipwx.net/ Phil Chadwicks blog at philtheforecaster.blogspot.com Weather or Weather Radio Apps This is a growing list and it needs more results for future reference. If you have idea’s for weather or Weather Radio apps which should be put into future issues of the newsletter, send an email to the author at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com. Right now these are iPhone apps only, because that is all we have at the moment. Your help is needed to expand it. Alertable by Public Emergency Alerting Services Inc https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/alertable/id1277488940?mt=8 Note: for android users there is an android version of this app, which you can find on the Google Play store. Weather Office Free by X2 Studios https://appsto.re/ca/–gXw.i This app provides weather and forecast information for both Canada and the US from Environment Canada and the National Weather Service respectively. In fact nearly all apps mentioned here provide information from one or both sources. There is a version you pay for but to me, it is the same as the free version. NOAA Weather Radio by Christopher Coudriet https://appsto.re/ca/R0LCy.i This app allows you to listen to NOAA Weather Radio and receive alerts for your county in the US. It would be nice if it also provided the same feature for Weatheradio Canada and Canadians too, as it provides some Canadian WXR’s as live streams. Weather Radio by WDT by Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. https://appsto.re/ca/5eBPy.i This app gives you NWS alerts and also pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone, when lightning is possibly detected in your local area or, in area’s you have selected. TuneIn Radio – Stream Live Radio by TuneIn https://appsto.re/ca/_7t-y.i This popular app allows you to listen to conventional, Internet and even some Weather Radio stations when and where available. you can even listen to podcasts of your favourite radio shows if you like and maybe even audiobooks, To help you pass the time in the monotony of a commute or while waiting in the waiting room for an appointment. WeatherCAN by Environment and Climate Change Canada https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/weathercan/id1334221563?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.gc.ec.weather_app_android.ops&hl=en_US Météo – Canadian Weather by North Bits Solutions Ltd. https://appsto.re/ca/vu0i3.i This is another app designed for Canadians and is available in both english and french. It is similar to the Degrees Pro app and some of the others on this list. It is also free, despite that it offers in app purchases. Atmosphérique Pro – Canadian Weather from EC by Quadrant Newmedia Corp. https://appsto.re/ca/ZcvgB.i https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/scanner-radio-police-fire/id498405045
This app is rather Self-explanatory, in that it allows us to hear scanner feeds from various police scanners, as well as Weather Radio. In fact, it helped in reporting one of the issues I highlighted in “The Watchdog Report” earlier in this issue.
This is what it says in the application’s description. “Our app helps keep you safe, dry, & save you time. Our weather coverage combines top-tier data, instant alerts, custom updates, & your detailed reports in one location. Introducing our new free app. Instant Weather helps keep you safe, keep you dry, and save you time. By combining top-tier weather data, government weather alerts, our custom severe weather updates, and the detailed reports from the most passionate weather community on social media, we’re able to provide you with the best possible forecast. ——————– Free version: – Instant Weather Alerts – Custom Severe Weather Updates – Accurate Current Conditions – 15 Day Forecast – 10 Day Hourly Forecast – 6.5 Hour Minute Forecast – Past & Future Radar (1.5 Hours) – Report Weather – Ads ——————– Remove Ads Subscription ($0.99/month or $5.99/year): – *No ads – *Past & Future Radar (5 Hours) – Custom Severe Weather Updates – Instant Weather Alerts – Accurate Current Conditions – 15 Day Forecast – 10 Day Hourly Forecast – 6.5 Hour Minute Forecast – Report Weather ——————– Remove Ads + 15 Minute Radar ($12.99/year): – *No ads – *Past & Future Radar (5 Hours) – *15 Minute Radar Intervals – Instant Weather Alerts – Accurate Current Conditions – 15 Day Forecast – 10 Day Hourly Forecast – 6.5 Hour Minute Forecast – Report Weather We’ve been developing and testing the app for several years and we’re finally ready to launch it! There is still a lot we want to improve with the app and still the potential for occasional bugs. We have more details about upcoming features, known bugs, tips, etc., on our website at https://InstantWeatherInc.com/app-faq Please join our Facebook tester group at https://Facebook.com/groups/InstantWeatherApp to share bugs and feedback with all testers, and to learn about the latest updates that we’re working on! A huge thanks to all those who have supported us over the years and have made this all possible! If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at help@InstantWeather.ca Thank you, – Adam”
Weather Gods by Weather Gods Ltd https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/weather-gods/id1041512978 This app is an interesting one, in that it provides weather alerts and plays sound affects too, so a lot of people who are blind appreciate it for its ease of use. However, it pushes weather alerts to the iPhone a few minutes late and that isn’t good, in a potential tornado situation where you may have less than 15 minutes to prepare and get into a safe place, to avoid being struck and killed by flying debris. However, it does push severe weather alerts so, if you wish to give it a try go ahead but I encourage you to use it with another app, like WeatherCAN, which is much faster and pushes alerts in a more timely manner. My Lightning Tracker & Alerts by JRustonApps B.V. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/my-lightning-tracker-alerts/id1175031987 This is another app which pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone but you have more control over how they are sent out, such as changing the distance and time duration between receiving a push notification from the app. Also, you have an option of changing the sound used to alert you of a lightning strike but it doesn’t notify you that it has been 30 minutes since the last lightning strike within 17 km of your current location. But, it still is a good app. The official Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter Twitter Account https://mobile.twitter.com/wxrnewsletter There are many reliable manufacturers and retailers of Weather Radios sold in Canada and the USA. Below is an admitedly incomplete list of Weather Radio manufacturers. Note: This list of suggested weather radios is strictly for informational purposes, and not as an endorsement of any specific model or manufacturer. Midland Radio Corporation http://www.Midlandradio.com Oregon Scientific http://www2oregonscientific.com Uniden Corporation http://www.Uniden.com Sangean USA http://www.Sangean.com Reecom Electronics Inc http://www.reecominc.com Kaito Electronics Inc http://www.kaitousa.com/ In Closing If you have any comments or suggestions, or if you wish to submit an article, please email me at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @WxrNewsletter. Also, check out The Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1854305558188610/ I would like to give special thanks to those who made contributions to this latest issue as follows: Daryl Stout WX4QZ, Joey Shynn VA3GOC, Ward Kenedy VE3WGK, Myles Keleman, Calvin Dejong, Bob Robichaud VE1MBR, Midland Radio Corporation, Marc-Antoine Chabot, Malcolm Kendal VE3BGD, Jim Langille VE1JBL, Gregory Zwicker, Phil Chadwick and Marc Fitkin for their help and contributions to the newsletter. Sincerely, Gord The Old Reliable.VA3WXA From my iPhone 8
Hello and welcome to the fourth and final issue of the newsletter for 2019. It is now November and it actually feels like November. It hadn’t been all that chilly until now and it hadn’t been all that hot during the month of August either in Ontario. However, on October 1st, it actually warmed up enough, to break records in Southern Ontario, including Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. However, winter is certainly on its way, as is iNotify to Weatheradio Canada. However, we will see the snow fly, before we hear the new voices on the network, on a regular basis across Canada.
You will notice some changes to the newsletter, in that models of WX radios will no longer be listed with a manufacturer. I decided to stop including them because there is no need and I had been mentioning models, which have been long discontinued. So, you will only see the manufacturer and a link to the website. The same is true for any Yahoo groups I have mentioned here, as they will no longer be seen in future issues. This is because Yahoo is getting rid of all groups. This includes a chat group relating to Weatheradio Canada, which had been around for years.
To those of you in any of the related Facebook groups, thanks for your continued support and reports, when you are able to post them. Some people have asked me, when I have posted about an outage on Weatheradio Canada, “what is watchdog?” Well, when I am reporting a “watchdog”. Situation for a Weatheradio Canada transmitter, there is no longer the need to ask what “watchdog” is, because I have created a blog post back in July, to address that question and to make it as clear as possible. I strongly encourage you to either follow or bookmark this blog, so if you forget what “watchdog” or any other term used by either NWR or Weatheradio Canada means, you can find the post in the archives and read it, before you feel the need to ask.
Survey Said… …
For those who probably don’t know, a tree fell in the forest and many people didn’t hear it. In other words, there was another survey which Weatheradio Canada had done in August 2019. Unfortunately, most people may not have heard the crack of the wood and the crash of trunk and bark to the ground. That is unless they were on social media groups and had heard about it through word of internet. The reason is that most WXR’s were unable to announce that the survey was taking place, because of being on dial-up or not ready to be switched over to iNotify. Unfortunately, this included the Toronto WXR. I only knew about the survey, from Facebook and by calling telephone ATAD’s, which are located in major cities. Before the prompts to get the weather information for a particular region, the survey announcement played, with both the male and female voices in which ever language you chose.
In case you haven’t figured it out, the survey was about the new voices, set to become the new ones we will hear on Weatheradio Canada. Because we have 4 of them, it was about which ones should do either: forecasts and weather conditions or, watches and warnings. Unfortunately, for myself and others, the voice samples provided for the survey, didn’t work when we tried doing the survey. However, because I have all 4 of them on my iPhone, I cheated and used them as they are, to inform my decision as to what I think each voice should be doing what, on the broadcast in the future. The survey is complete and unfortunately, I don’t have the results.
I wanted to hear the new voices on my WX radio because around the time of the survey, there were some people who were divided on one of the voices, just because one person didn’t like the tone. That voice was Ava and I can understand why, if you get a chance to listen to the Continuous Marine Broadcasts on CCG radio, on WX channels 8 and 9 on scanners, marine radios and amateur radios. The voice is very muffled and unfortunately, nothing has been done about it and I don’t know if anyone has reported it. I haven’t because… what am I going to say? I had no idea what voice it was, when I had first heard it back in 2014 and when iOS 10 came out in September 2016, I found out and well… I grew to like the voice…. a lot as it is in normal sound quality. Let us also keep in mind that the people running Canadian Coastguard Radio probably can’t do much about it, as the volume goes up and down, depending on whether it is weather and general marine navigation notifications or, a station ID message.
As I was saying, the survey is done and unfortunately, I have no news on which voices will be used, for the various boxes. My logical guess is that at least for the English translation, it will be Tom doing the bulk of the speaking, with Ava contributing here and there, saying things like the time announcements and little introductions to certain boxes. For example: in Ontario the current configuration was supposed to have the Avipad’s voices saying “current marine reports” in either language but, there was nothing in the dictionary with that phrase, in both English and French matching those words. So, they had a canned message with someone reading out those few words, in both languages. By the way, I hope you didn’t mind the attempt at working this metaphor into the newsletter. It was there and I just couldn’t resist.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this issue and have a safe rest of the fall and early winter and stay warm. I hope we have a great rest of what’s left of 2019 and that the coming winter isn’t brutally cold and snowy, like some people are predicting. It makes for tricky walking, for a Padestrian and especially, someone who cannot see, where the next thin cote of ice is on a sidewalk or street crossing.
THE WATCHDOG REPORT
If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call 1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA at nwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web at www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call 1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team at ec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook Group. You will find the link to it later in this issue and all issues of the newsletter. You can also email the author directly at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com and it will be passed on for you.
Note from the author:
I will mainly include items with a definitive time on their start to finish and ones with unknown starts or endings, I will of course include as well. Also, this issue is a return to a more chronological order, with any outages reported to me, through Facebook or from myself.
Friday August 2nd, Toronto XMJ 225 went into watchdog again at 12:15 PM, without an alert and was restored around 1:56 PM the same day.
On Saturday August 3rd at 4:15 AM, all of Ontario went into watchdog mode and various WXR’s came back, either at full strength or with one thing holding things together. Toronto XMJ 225 is a prime example of this, as the only thing keeping it alive was the english language hourly reports for inland weather observations and even it slipped back into watchdog a couple of times. However, on Monday August 5th it was brought back to full strength, but still on dial-up.
On Wednesday August 7th at around 1:15 AM, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog mode, after a day of severe thunderstorm watches and warnings. Everything came back around 7:31 AM, with Toronto behaving just like in the above watchdog. However, later on in the day, it too began to go back to normal, without issuing SAME alerts, as mentioned in the August 2019 SAME and 1050 Hz tone test report.
On Tuesday August 20th around 7:15 PM, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog and was restored the next morning. Altho, without Toronto getting back on FTP and issuing alerts again and most importantly, having the current survey announcement (at the time) in the configuration. Also, on Saturday August 24th at around 8:00 AM, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog, for 2 hours.
On Friday September 6th at 11:15 ADT, Weatheradio Canada station XLK 473 in Halifax, went into watchdog, along with the entirety of the Atlantic region. Not good, considering Hurricane watches and warnings, as well as tropical weather statements were in effect for eastern Canada, from Quebec to Newfoundland including Nova Scotia, because of hurricane Dorian. It was back the next day, thanks to an angry tweet from someone else and an email, from myself.
From Myles Keleman and the NOAA Weather Radio and Weatheradio Canada FB group on Sunday October 6th
Station XLM537 currently broadcasting a looping “technical difficulties” message. Don’t know how long it has been. I just discovered it.
Author’s follow up:
I tried calling the ATAD for the local area in question but found no link to when the station had gone into watchdog and had received a couple more updates, with everything being the same. Also, a repeat of the same situation, with the same WXR had happened on October 13th, also from Myles Keleman. It had come back before this second outage but it is unknown when it did. Apparently, the situation has remained the same, with no indication as to whether it had been restored or not. That is, until Saturday October 19th, when it was reported that it is broadcasting again.
On Saturday October 19th at around 2:00 PM PT, Castlegar XMD 482 had gone into watchdog, after 2 hours of the hourly reports not updating and the 11:00 AM forecast getting through. It had returned some time either on Sunday October 20th or early Monday October 21st.
On Monday October 21st at around 3:15 PM, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog mode and wasn’t restored until around 8:00 AM the next morning.
On Tuesday October 22nd, St Catharines VAD 320 went into watchdog, all by itself around 8:15 PM and wasn’t restored until around 11:00 AM on Wednesday, October 23, just before the RWT.
On Sunday October 27th at around 8:00 AM, St Catharines VAD 320 went down again and wasn’t restored until Monday October 28th at 7:44 AM. There was a wind warning in affect for parts of the listening area and I wonder if that may have triggered it.
On a more positive note, this good news report from Christian Grosso.
“Finally! After two years, KWO-35 from NYC will be back on the air periodically at degrades power. The transmitter is now atop the Empire State Building.”
This is from the US National Weather Service New York NY FB page, poasted on Wednesday October 23rd.
The NOAA Weather Radio NYC transmitter (KWO-35) will be on air for a few weeks to test transmission. However, the transmitter will be operating at reduced power during the testing phase.
See our Public Information Statement for more information.
CANWARN (CANadian Weather Amateur Radio Network) is a volunteer organization of amateur radio operators who report severe weather and damage reports to Environment Canada when they see it. Weather reports from amateur radio operators help confirm on the ground what satellites and radars see in the atmosphere. The information gathered from CANWARN is also used to update and fine tune weather warnings, fill in gaps in current observing networks and is also valuable in forensic storm analysis. When Environment Canada issues severe weather watches or warnings, they may alert the CANWARN volunteer Net Controllers in the affected areas. The volunteer Net Controllers contact other CANWARN members on the amateur radio, tell them a watch or warning has been issued and ask them to report signs of approaching severe weather. In the US SKYWARN is the American counterpart to CANWARN in Canada and the purpose for it is exactly the same.
For this section of the newsletter, we will explore how different CANWARN and SKYWARN groups operate in their local region, from time to time. There may be some SKYWARN information from meteorologists in this issue and there will be some tips on how to report severe weather for both CANWARN and SKYWARN.
We may not agree with everything that is written here, but it is important to hear from others to see how different groups operate throughout North America.
Well, it’s now the time of year, when we go into winter mode and unfortunately, nothing new to report in this issue. However, I will have the annual reminder about the spring 2020 sessions, if any in the February 2020 issue/ post. There may be more of an emphasis on online CANWARN training sessions going forward. Hopefully, we will have more news on that in the coming months and of course, it will either be in a future newsletter issue or, as a standalone post.
Also, I am still looking for any information, on CANWARN and or, SKYWARN training schedules, outside of Ontario. Unfortunately, I have not received any emails from meteorologists or my fellow spotters, as to when sessions are will be conducted. Of course, I will post them as a standalone blog post outside the newsletter timeline and when ever a new schedule update is released. I have given my email address many times throughout the newsletter and any help on that is certainly welcome. Many thanks in advance.
As for SKYWARN training schedules, you can go to either of the following sites:
If you are CANWARN trained you should give the following information to the weather office in order to help them ground truth: Your name, CANWARN ID, contact number, – Where – you are located and the approximate location of what you are reporting, – Describe what you are witnessing/what you witnessed, the time of occurrence of the event and duration, its movement (where the phenomenon came from and where it is going).
In the spring/summer severe weather season, please report the following:
Hail (use coins to describe its size…dime, nickel, quarter, loonie for larger hail…golf ball etc.), Heavy rain that has resulted in local flooding, Damaging winds (damage from tree branches down to more significant tree or structural damage), Large scale rotation in a thunderstorm such as: Wall Cloud – Funnel Cloud, Waterspout and Tornado, Dense fog – visibility less than 1 km
Note: if you are unsure of the rotation or presence of a wall cloud or funnel cloud…watch the area for a few minutes if it is safe to do so to verify the situation.
For the fall/winter, please report the following: Dense fog (visibility less than 1 km), Any occurrence of freezing rain or freezing drizzle, Heavily accumulating snow (2 or more cm/hr), Whiteout conditions in snow/blowing snow (visibility near zero), Rapid freezing of water on road surfaces.
For SKYWARN spotters, you should report: Tornadoes or funnel clouds (be very wary of look-alikes; watch for rotation)
waterspouts, Wall clouds, especially if they are rotating
Hail (Be specific with regard to size; however, YOU SHOULD NOT report MARBLE size)
Winds (40 mph or greater; specify whether they are estimated or recorded), large branches downed (specify the diameter of the branch), Trees/power lines downed, Structural damage to buildings such as roof, windows, etc.
Rainfall (1 inch or greater in an hour) (NOT a 1″/hr. rate for 10 minutes), 2 inches or greater storm total, Flooding — Streams/Rivers — also, when nearing bankful — Coastal — Street (Road Closures/Washouts, Cars Stuck due to flood waters. Minimum of 6″ of water covering an entire roadway or lane of a major route/highway).
For Winter Weather you should report: Precipitation type change (rain to sleet/freezing rain/snow, when the change has “taken hold”), Thunder when it is accompanied by snow, 1/4″ radial ice accretion (from twig outward; not circumference), New Snowfall from the First 2 inches; every 2-3 inches thereafter, 1 inch per hour or greater.
If it is less than 2 inches total, give the final total only Give final total: no partial reports please) Report any snow/sleet/freezing rain if not in NWS forecast.
Please consult your local Amateur Radio club or CANWARN or SKYWARN group for their: email address, Twitter account or Facebook pages.
Weather Nets On Ham Radio from Daryl Stout WX4QZ
a) VoIP Skywarn Hurricane Prep Net — Meets at 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, 6pm Mountain, 5pm Pacific Time, on the *WX_TALK* Echolink Conference Server…Echolink Node 7203, and IRLP Node 9219.
During the off-season hurricane months from December through May, the net meets on the FIRST SATURDAY of the month ONLY. During the Atlantic Hurricane Season, from June through November, the net meets WEEKLY, at 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, 6pm Mountain, and 5pm Pacific Time.
Also, note that on the first Saturday of December, the net is ONE HOUR EARLIER…at 7pm Eastern, 6pm Central, 5pm Mountain, and 5pm Pacific Time. This is so at the conclusion of Skywarn Recognition Day, stations don’t have to wait for the net to occur.
b) Southeast US D-Star Weather Net — Meets at 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central, 7pm Mountain, and 6pm Pacific, every Sunday night, on Reflector 4, Port A. The net also meets on the Southeast US D-Star Weather Net Ratflector on D-Rats.
DX Info Centre at http://www.dxinfocentre.com/, to hear what Weather Radio sounds like before buying your first receiver, visit YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/ or just use Google to watch or listen to Youtube video or audio.
The NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards Newsletter is published four times a year. There is some seasonal information to notify recipients of additional weather information available to them that they may not know about (most of which can be found on the NOAA Watch web site http://www.noaawatch.gov/ ). At this site you can also subscribe to various weather feeds. The rest of the newsletter remains relatively unchanged due to outreach requirements. The current newsletter is available at the Noaa Weather Radio website http://www.weather.gov/nwr/news.htm. At this time, there is no newsletter mailing list to subscribe.
This is a growing list and it needs more results for future reference. If you have idea’s for weather or Weather Radio apps which should be put into future issues of the newsletter, send an email to the author at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com. Right now these are iPhone apps only, because that is all we have at the moment. Your help is needed to expand it.
Alertable by Public Emergency Alerting Services Inc
This app provides weather and forecast information for both Canada and the US from Environment Canada and the National Weather Service respectively. In fact nearly all apps mentioned here provide information from one or both sources. There is a version you pay for but to me, it is the same as the free version.
This app allows you to listen to NOAA Weather Radio and receive alerts for your county in the US. It would be nice if it also provided the same feature for Weatheradio Canada and Canadians too, as it provides some Canadian WXR’s as live streams.
Weather Radio by WDT by Weather Decision Technologies, Inc.
This app gives you NWS alerts and also pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone, when lightning is possibly detected in your local area or, in area’s you have selected.
This popular app allows you to listen to conventional, Internet and even some Weather Radio stations when and where available. you can even listen to podcasts of your favourite radio shows if you like and maybe even audiobooks, To help you pass the time in the monotony of a commute or while waiting in the waiting room for an appointment.
WeatherCAN, Environment and Climate Change Canada’s new weather app is now available on Android and iOS. Check your store to download. Here is the iOS link.
This is another app designed for Canadians and is available in both english and french. It is similar to the Degrees Pro app and some of the others on this list. It is also free, despite that it offers in app purchases.
Atmosphérique Pro – Canadian Weather from EC by Quadrant Newmedia Corp.
This app is an interesting one, in that it provides weather alerts and plays sound affects too, so a lot of people who are blind appreciate it for its ease of use. However, it pushes weather alerts to the iPhone a few minutes late and that isn’t good, in a potential tornado situation where you may have less than 15 minutes to prepare and get into a safe place, to avoid being struck and killed by flying debris. However, it does push severe weather alerts so, if you wish to give it a try go ahead but I encourage you to use it with another app, like WeatherCAN, which is much faster and pushes alerts in a more timely manner.
This is another app which pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone but you have more control over how they are sent out, such as changing the distance and time duration between receiving a push notification from the app. Also, you have an option of changing the sound used to alert you of a lightning strike but it doesn’t notify you that it has been 30 minutes since the last lightning strike within 17 km of your current location. But, it still is a good app.
The official Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter Twitter Account
There are many reliable manufacturers and retailers of Weather Radios sold in Canada and the USA. Below is an admitedly incomplete list of Weather Radio manufacturers. Note: This list of suggested weather radios is strictly for informational purposes, and not as an endorsement of any specific model or manufacturer.
If you have any comments or suggestions, or if you wish to submit an article, please email me at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @WxrNewsletter. Also, check out The Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1854305558188610/
I would like to give special thanks to those who made contributions to this latest issue as follows:
Daryl Stout WX4QZ, Myles Keleman, Brandon Hennis, Christian Grosso., Bob Robichaud VE1MBR, Midland Radio Corporation, Malcolm Kendal VE3BGD, Jim Langille VE1JBL, Gregory Zwicker, Phil Chadwick and Marc Fitkin for their help and contributions to the newsletter.
Hello and welcome to the third issue of the newsletter for 2019. It is summer and so far, it hasn’t been that bad in Ontario, but some parts of Canada had snow in July. I wish I was joking but, I’m not. At least the weather has become more consistent with summer weather throughout Canada, after the July snow..
Since the last issue, there have been some developments with Weatheradio Canada and I will get into the ones I know about, in a bit. Unfortunately, we also have some passings to talk about, from both the newsletter email list and Weatheradio Canada itself. James Organ passed awayon April 24that the age of 70 or 71. He was a heavy smoker and was also a ham, with the call sign VE3EMT, as well as VE3OSJ. Some people liked him and others didn’t but you can’t deny his loyalty to the hobby and in particular, ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) in Toronto, as well as doing various community walks like: MS Walk, walk for schizophrenia as well as doing the annual warriors day parade at Exhibition Place.
As far as Weatheradio goes, he knew a bit about it but was easily confused, as he had thought that the Toronto and St. Catharines WXR’s broadcasted much the same information. Once he called me on the phone, listening to both stations and because they both broadcast in english and french, he had thought that they were broadcasting information for the GTA, despite that they are on different frequencies and the transmitters are in different cities. I had to explain that they were completely different WXR’s and he then understood after a careful explanation of why they are both different from each other, despite the same voices on both frequencies. Those who were close to him, will surely miss him.
Here is what Geoff Coulson told me, about Tony, as he had worked with him for years in what was formerly named The Toronto Weather Office and is now known as The Ontario Storm Prediction Centre, by the time Tony had retired in 2007. With regards to Tony, yes, I knew him well during his time here at ECCC as well as after he retired. He was a frequent golf buddy. One of the best people I knew who touched many lives, he is sorely missed.” I had spoken with Tony on the phone a couple of times when I was a bit greener, as far as Weatheradio Canada and how VHF radio worked. I had thought that I would be able to hear the signal for Collingwood in the northern part of Toronto or, even traveling into Vaughn. In fact, the signal doesn’t even begin to break through until Aurora Go. Obviously, I know better now and since 2008, Denis Paquette had taken over Tony’s position until January 2016, with Warren Gash having the title, presently. I have nothing bad to say about Tony, or any of the people I had interacted with on the phone or by email over the years and obviously, it’s a bummer when someone you know is taken too soon. RIP to both James and Tony.
As for this issue, “The Watchdog Report” is back but it won’t be chronological as in past issues because, I simply forgot to write the outage is in my notes and had to dig into various Facebook groups and emails. So, this time it’s going to be a bit scattered and I have managed to collect most of the puzzle pieces for this issue, of the report. As I have said in the past, it may change with the new software and how outages will occur on the network and it may not even be called watchdog anymore. However, I will find out as best I can, as to how everything will be labeled and named so I can give you the latest in what is going on.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this issue and have a safe rest of the summer and stay safe. I hope we have a great rest of what’s left of the summer of 2019 and it is nice and hot, but not stifling.
ChangesWXR Canada
At last, we have signs that Weatheradio Canada are about to go through some changes, which I had specified in previous issues but they look more likely now. There have been new voices added on to some WXR’s and they will be regular ones, once everything is switched over, as you will find out below. Also, some stations have been separated from each other, as they are no longer repeater stations of each other and even some VHF and UHF frequencies (outside the weather band) have been discontinued. As an example of this, here is a list of the changes which have happened for Weatheradio Canada in Ontario. Thanks to Warren Gash for kindly providing me with the list and, what he was allowed to tell me in an email.
1.Sarnia/Oil Springs VHF (XJV 492 – 162.400 MHz) is now a stand-alone transmitter. It uses the Nuance voices Tom/Nicolas for its ID. The ID was updated to reflect its stand-alone nature, and the department name change to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
2.Windsor/McGregor VHF (VAZ 533 – 162.475 MHz) uses the Nuance voices for its ID, which was updated to reflect its stand-alone nature, and the department name change to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
3.Windsor/Victoria Park UHF (VAZ 826 – 407.2875 MHz) was closed, as it was no longer necessary as the broadcast feed for both repeaters in Oil Springs and McGregor.
4.Sault Ste Marie/Derouche VHF (XMJ 373 – 162.400 MHZ) is now a stand-alone transmitter. The ID was updated.
5.The Montreal River VHF repeater (VAT 404 – 162.475 MHz) was relocated to Wawa, using the same ID and frequency, and is now a stand-alone transmitter. The ID was updated to reflect its new location, stand-alone nature, and the department name change to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
6.Sault Ste Marie/Industrial VHF (VAT 432 – 173.955 MHz) was closed, as it was no longer necessary as the broadcast feed for both repeaters in Derouche and Montreal River.
7.Rosseau VHF (VBT 629 – 162.550 MHz) was upgraded.
8.Little Current VHF (XMJ 375- 162.475 MHz) was made stand-alone, and no longer a repeater of Greater Sudbury UHF (XLJ 898 – 411.7125 MHz). Both IDs were updated to reflect this change.
9.Ramore VHF (VDB 885 – 162.400 MHz) will be made stand-alone and decoupled from Timmins VHF (VDB 886 – 162.475 MHz) later this month.
10.Mount Forest VHF (XLN 600 – 162.450 MHz) will be made stand-alone and decoupled from Goderich UHF (XLT 839 – 407.2875 MHz) in August-September.
11.The use of the Nuance voices will extend beyond the IDs, once we move transmitters from AVIPaDS to the iNotify system. Date: To be determined.
12.Voice selection will be determined in the near future. I suspect that distinct ones will be used to differentiate the regular broadcast, from alerts.
In summary, here is the list of Ontario stations that are iNotify-ready (as of July 5, 2019):
1.Algonquin Park
2.Atikokan
3.Barry’s Bay/Wilno
4.Fort Frances
5.Kenora
6.Little Current
7.Ottawa
8.Pembroke
9.Renfrew
10.Rosseau
11.Sarnia/Oil Springs
12.Sault Ste Marie/Derouche
13.St Catharines/ Niagara
14.
Thunder Bay
15.Wawa
16.Windsor/McGregor
Okay, now we know that the new software will be called iNotify and yeah, it sounds much like an Apple iOS branding but, it’s not. Yes, Nuance voices which have been around for a number of years will be a part of the broadcast and, all 4 of them are available on current iOS devices but, this probably isn’t a Tim Cook creation. Either way, I’m looking forward to hearing what it will sound like, once the new voices become regular on Weatheradio Canada.
This also brings up a question someone had asked me in the last few weeks. Will Weatheradio Canada be getting rid of transmitters? My guess is not necessarily but, some have already been closed because of the lack of a repeater station link. Like the example of Windsor and Sarnia/Oil Springs being finally separated from each other. So, I don’t think it will be a mass shrinkage, but out of necessity. That’s my own opinion on it and I welcome anyone else to offer their own and tell me I’m either right or wrong.
THE WATCHDOG REPORT
If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA atnwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web atwww.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team atec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook page and the Yahoo Weatheradio Chat Group. You will find the link to both the Facebook and the Yahoo group later in this issue and all issues of the newsletter. You can also email the author directly atwxrnewsletter@gmail.comand it will be passed on for you.
Note from the author:
I will mainly include items with a definitive time stamp on them, from start to finish. That is in affect the whole point of this report, to give as conclusively as possible, dates and times when outages have begun and ended. However, in recent issues I have started putting in outages with unknown start and end times, as honourable mentions. However, I still would prefer definitive start and end times, for reference in other sources and websites. For this issue, I have decided not to include them in any particular order so, if you want to see your area as reported by myself or someone else, read on. Also, I will include comments about such problems and again, no order here so, keep reading. Okay?
July 22nd at around 11:15 AM, Toronto XMJ 225 went into watchdog without any warning and came backbetween 2:00 and 3:00 PM, this time on dial-up. Unfortunately, this had resulted in no alerts being sent out to that WXR, including the weekly test or any severe thunderstorm watches or warnings which were issued.
May 20
Andrew Back
Is there something down? I live south of London and our local broadcast (ch4) is nothing but static since at least yesterday morning. I checked with a buddy of mine who is in London and both his mobile unit and home base are doing the same as mine so I know it’s not our radios. Dave Ross reported that London was back and broadcasting, on May 21st.
June 21st
Brian Rodgers
Halifax Station XLK 473 is now having problems broadcasting weather information, because it is in watchdog.
May 20
Marc Fitkin
Algonquin Park on 162.400 is not transmitting. This was unfortunate because getting any alerts for what was a truly unpredictable weekend we didn’t get. WeatherCan app worked as advertised but the forecasts were not a reflection of what happened. A totally whacky weekend.
June 3rd
Calvin Dejong
Weatheradio Canada VAZ533 in Windsor appears to be in watchdog, technical difficulties message and station ID repeating, except the ID is using new synthesized voices. XJV492 Sarnia also has the synthesized voice for station ID (but still only rarely, wish it was every English cycle).
June 20
Toronto XMJ 225 had gone off the air, literally and was restored some time later, as if nothing had happened.
June 13
Looks like a potential problem with Toronto XMJ 225 is happening. Things like forecasts and hourly reports in both languages start playing and are suddenly cut off and on to the next thing. Hopefully someone can fix this before a watchdog starts barking.
What had happened is that nothing was updated after the8:00 AMhourly reports and as the morning went on, problems arose with bins starting and not playing all the way through. It had to be taken off the air for a few minutes to reset everything and everything became alright again, for the time being.
July 5
Martin Roldan
VDC816 Brooks, AB hasn’t broadcasted anything in about a month. No weather forecasts or alerts. Can someone tell me what likely happened?
The same thing was reported on May 4th with the same WXR. For any of the comments and reports I have put here without an end date to the outage, they are all honourable mentions.
On Saturday May 25th at 10:15 PM, St. Catharines VAD 320 had gone into watchdog mode, during the first severe weather outbreak of 2019 in Ontario. It came back on Monday May 27th at 7:13 AM.
On Saturday June 1st at around 6:27 PM, all of Ontario had gone into watchdog and had come back within a few minutes.
On June 28 around 11:15 P.m, Toronto XMJ 225 and the rest of Ontario has just gone into watchdog and was restored some time on June 29th.
On Saturday July 6th at Just before2:00 PM, St Catharines VAD 320 had gone into watchdog mode and had come backaround 11:00 PM, the same day. The11:00 AMforecast had gone through and that is when things had stopped updating, until the WXR was reset.
On Tuesday July 30th St Catharines VAD 320 had gone into watchdog mode, just before 7:00 PM. The 3:00 PM hourly report went through, along with the 3:30 PM forecast and everything had stopped updating. It was restored around 8:00 AM the next morning.
On Wednesday July 31st, Toronto XMJ 225 had quit broadcasting with a Dead carrier and was restored at 7:44 AM, after being taken off the air for a minute or two. As a bonus, it is back on FTP.
THE CANWARN/SKYWARN REPORT
CANWARN (CANadian Weather Amateur Radio Network) is a volunteer organization of amateur radio operators who report severe weather and damage reports to Environment Canada when they see it. Weather reports from amateur radio operators help confirm on the ground what satellites and radars see in the atmosphere. The information gathered from CANWARN is also used to update and fine tune weather warnings, fill in gaps in current observing networks and is also valuable in forensic storm analysis. When Environment Canada issues severe weather watches or warnings, they may alert the CANWARN volunteer Net Controllers in the affected areas. The volunteer Net Controllers contact other CANWARN members on the amateur radio, tell them a watch or warning has been issued and ask them to report signs of approaching severe weather. In the US SKYWARN is the American counterpart to CANWARN in Canada and the purpose for it is exactly the same.
For this section of the newsletter, we will explore how different CANWARN and SKYWARN groups operate in their local region, from time to time. There may be some SKYWARN information from meteorologists in this issue and there will be some tips on how to report severe weather for both CANWARN and SKYWARN.
We may not agree with everything that is written here, but it is important to hear from others to see how different groups operate throughout North America.
Authors Note:
I would like to know about both CANWARN and or.SKYWARN training schedules, outside of Ontario. Unfortunately, I have not received any emails from meteorologists or my fellow spotters, as to when sessions are will be conducted. Of course, I will post them as a standalone blog post outside the newsletter timeline and when ever a new schedule update is released. I have given my email address many times throughout the newsletter and any help on that is certainly welcome. Many thanks in advance.
So, for those who attended a CANWARN session in Ontario, what did you think? For those who used words and descriptions like: wattered down and not very good, I agree that it wasn’t the same as what we are used to with Geoff but, Gerald is new to this and he is a different person. He will either change his delivery over time or, it will stay the same. Unfortunately, for those who attended the Toronto session on May 4th, we couldn’t get a tour because of a teleconference going on, dew to the flooding in parts of Ontario so, that was a let down. But, I am willing to give Gerald more time, before I can actually constructively criticize him, if need be.
As for the future of CANWARN, here is what Geoff Coulson told me in an email and, the same email where he talked about Tony. I had asked him if there was any new information coming, in the form of a mass blast and here is what he told me, about what is to come.
“Hi, Gord, no new info on the CANWARN front. I continue to plug away at some scripts that could be used for short storm spotter training videos on Youtube. The program will likely continue to have some public training sessions but more and more people will be steered towards the videos and the online manual I am developing. The videos and online manual likely won’t be done till sometime next year so that is why at least some public training venues will again be held in 2020”.
This will surely be interesting to watch how this comes together and how many of us begin to take or refresh our training online and not attend sessions next year. My main reason is to meet like minded people and to show off to my friends and family, that I have been in an important place, where serious work is done and payed for, by the federal government, no matter who is in power. Besides, I get to leave home for a few hours and enjoy other’s company. However, I welcome the online aspect because this may be a way of showing the public that anyone can help out with detecting the weather around them because, we are the eyes and ears and our reports are just as important as reports from observation stations and weather radar.
As for SKYWARN training schedules, you can go to either of the following sites:
If you are CANWARN trained you should give the following information to the weather office in order to help them ground truth: Your name, CANWARN ID, contact number, – Where – you are located and the approximate location of what you are reporting, – Describe what you are witnessing/what you witnessed, the time of occurrence of the event and duration, its movement (where the phenomenon came from and where it is going).
In the spring/summer severe weather season, please report the following:
Hail (use coins to describe its size…dime, nickel, quarter, loonie for larger hail…golf ball etc.), Heavy rain that has resulted in local flooding, Damaging winds (damage from tree branches down to more significant tree or structural damage), Large scale rotation in a thunderstorm such as: Wall Cloud – Funnel Cloud, Waterspout and Tornado, Dense fog – visibility less than 1 km
Note: if you are unsure of the rotation or presence of a wall cloud or funnel cloud…watch the area for a few minutes if it is safe to do so to verify the situation.
For the fall/winter, please report the following: Dense fog (visibility less than 1 km), Any occurrence of freezing rain or freezing drizzle, Heavily accumulating snow (2 or more cm/hr), Whiteout conditions in snow/blowing snow (visibility near zero), Rapid freezing of water on road surfaces.
For SKYWARN spotters, you should report: Tornadoes or funnel clouds (be very wary of look-alikes; watch for rotation)
waterspouts, Wall clouds, especially if they are rotating
Hail (Be specific with regard to size; however, YOU SHOULD NOT report MARBLE size)
Winds (40 mph or greater; specify whether they are estimated or recorded), large branches downed (specify the diameter of the branch), Trees/power lines downed, Structural damage to buildings such as roof, windows, etc.
Rainfall (1 inch or greater in an hour) (NOT a 1″/hr. rate for 10 minutes), 2 inches or greater storm total, Flooding — Streams/Rivers — also, when nearing bankful — Coastal — Street (Road Closures/Washouts, Cars Stuck due to flood waters. Minimum of 6″ of water covering an entire roadway or lane of a major route/highway).
For Winter Weather you should report: Precipitation type change (rain to sleet/freezing rain/snow, when the change has “taken hold”), Thunder when it is accompanied by snow, 1/4″ radial ice accretion (from twig outward; not circumference), New Snowfall from the First 2 inches; every 2-3 inches thereafter, 1 inch per hour or greater.
If it is less than 2 inches total, give the final total only Give final total: no partial reports please) Report any snow/sleet/freezing rain if not in NWS forecast.
Please consult your local Amateur Radio club or CANWARN or SKYWARN group for their: email address, Twitter account or Facebook pages.
Weather Nets On Ham Radio from Daryl Stout WX4QZ
a) VoIP Skywarn Hurricane Prep Net — Meetsat 8pm Eastern,7pm Central,6pm Mountain,5pm Pacific Time, on the *WX_TALK* Echolink Conference Server…Echolink Node 7203, and IRLP Node 9219.
During the off-season hurricane months from December through May, the net meets on the FIRST SATURDAY of the month ONLY. During the Atlantic Hurricane Season, from June through November, the net meets WEEKLY,at 8pm Eastern,7pm Central,6pm Mountain, and5pm Pacific Time.
Also, note that on the first Saturday of December, the net is ONE HOUR EARLIER…at7pm Eastern,6pm Central,5pm Mountain, and5pm Pacific Time. This is so at the conclusion of Skywarn Recognition Day, stations don’t have to wait for the net to occur.
b) Southeast US D-Star Weather Net — Meetsat 9pm Eastern,8pm Central,7pm Mountain, and6pm Pacific, everySunday night, on Reflector 4, Port A. The net also meets on the Southeast US D-Star Weather Net Ratflector on D-Rats.
DX Info Centre athttp://www.dxinfocentre.com/, to hear what Weather Radio sounds like before buying your first receiver, visit YouTube athttp://www.youtube.com/or just use Google to watch or listen to Youtube video or audio.
The NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards Newsletter is published four times a year. There is some seasonal information to notify recipients of additional weather information available to them that they may not know about (most of which can be found on the NOAA Watch web sitehttp://www.noaawatch.gov/). At this site you can also subscribe to various weather feeds. The rest of the newsletter remains relatively unchanged due to outreach requirements. The current newsletter is available at the Noaa Weather Radio websitehttp://www.weather.gov/nwr/news.htm. At this time, there is no newsletter mailing list to subscribe.
This is a growing list and it needs more results for future reference. If you have idea’s for weather or Weather Radio apps which should be put into future issues of the newsletter, send an email to the author atwxrnewsletter@gmail.com. Right now these are iPhone apps only, because that is all we have at the moment. Your help is needed to expand it.
Alertable by Public Emergency Alerting Services Inc
This app provides weather and forecast information for both Canada and the US from Environment Canada and the National Weather Service respectively. In fact nearly all apps mentioned here provide information from one or both sources. There is a version you pay for but to me, it is the same as the free version.
This app allows you to listen to NOAA Weather Radio and receive alerts for your county in the US. It would be nice if it also provided the same feature for Weatheradio Canada and Canadians too, as it provides some Canadian WXR’s as live streams.
Weather Radio by WDT by Weather Decision Technologies, Inc.
This app gives you NWS alerts and also pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone, when lightning is possibly detected in your local area or, in area’s you have selected.
This popular app allows you to listen to conventional, Internet and even some Weather Radio stations when and where available. you can even listen to podcasts of your favourite radio shows if you like and maybe even audiobooks, To help you pass the time in the monotony of a commute or while waiting in the waiting room for an appointment.
WeatherCAN, Environment and Climate Change Canada’s new weather app is now available on Android and iOS. Check your store to download. Here is the iOS link.
This is another app designed for Canadians and is available in both english and french. It is similar to the Degrees Pro app and some of the others on this list. It is also free, despite that it offers in app purchases.
Atmosphérique Pro – Canadian Weather from EC by Quadrant Newmedia Corp.
This app is an interesting one, in that it provides weather alerts and plays sound affects too, so a lot of people who are blind appreciate it for its ease of use. However, it pushes weather alerts to the iPhone a few minutes late and that isn’t good, in a potential tornado situation where you may have less than 15 minutes to prepare and get into a safe place, to avoid being struck and killed by flying debris. However, it does push severe weather alerts so, if you wish to give it a try go ahead but I encourage you to use it with another app, like WeatherCAN, which is much faster and pushes alerts in a more timely manner.
This is another app which pushes lightning alerts to your iPhone but you have more control over how they are sent out, such as changing the distance and time duration between receiving a push notification from the app. Also, you have an option of changing the sound used to alert you of a lightning strike but it doesn’t notify you that it has been 30 minutes since the last lightning strike within 17 km of your current location. But, it still is a good app.
The official Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter Twitter Account
There are many reliable manufacturers and retailers of Weather Radios sold in Canada and the USA. Below is a list of the recommended models currently for sale. Note: This list of suggested weather radios is strictly for informational purposes, and not as an endorsement of any specific model or manufacturer.
Midland Radio Corporationhttp://www.Midlandradio.comWR-300, W-r100B, EH55VP, WR-120, HH54VP, HH54VP2, ER102, Er300, ER310, EH55VP, Nautico 3, WR-11 and WR-400 are all manufactured by Midland and sold in North America.
Uniden Corporationhttp://www.Uniden.comBC75XLT, BC95XLT, BC125AT, BC346XT, BCT15X, BCD996XT, Homepatrol, BC436HP, BC536HP and BCD396XT are currently sold in North America.
Sangean USAhttp://www.Sangean.comCL100, DT400,, DT500, MMR88, PR-D4W and PRD9W are manufactured by Sangean and currently sold in North America.
Reecom Electronics Inc
http://www.reecominc.comR-1630, R-1650, R-200 and R-500 are manufactured by Reecom and currently sold in North America.
Kaito Electronics Inchttp://www.kaitousa.com/. KA500, KA101 and KA600 are currently sold in North America.
If you have any comments or suggestions, or if you wish to submit an article, please email me atwxrnewsletter@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @WxrNewsletter. Also, check out The Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter on Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/groups/1854305558188610/
I would like to give special thanks to those who made contributions to this latest issue as follows:
Daryl Stout WX4QZ, Marc-Antoine Chabot, Warren Gash, Bob Robichaud VE1MBR, Midland Radio Corporation, Malcolm Kendal VE3BGD, Jim Langille VE1JBL, Gregory Zwicker, Phil Chadwick and Marc Fitkin for their help and contributions to the newsletter, among others who have been mentioned earlier.