Environment and Climate Change Canada has announced it will be shutting down its Weatheradio Canada service.
The shutdown is effective March 16. The bilingual service operated with a network of approximately 225 transmitters from Nunavut to the Maritime Islands, according to data collected by William Hepburn.
Just like NOAA Weather Radio in the U.S., the Canadian stations transmit on frequencies between 162.400 and 162.550 MHz, usually with between 50 and 500 watts of transmitter power output.
ECCC also will discontinue the country’s “Hello Weather” program on the same date, which made local forecasts and alerts available via telephone.
“Due to increasing costs, maintaining the technology and services used to operate Weatheradio and Hello Weather is becoming increasingly challenging,” Samantha Bayard, a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada, told Radio World.
As a result, she said ECCC decided to discontinue the services as “more viable alternatives are available.” Bayard said that the associated infrastructure for the transmitters will be decommissioned over a two-year period.
Emergency weather alerts will continue to be available through partners like Alert Ready, the national public alerting system in Canada, Bayard said. ECCC is working with Public Safety Canada to strengthen the country’s alerting system.
Bayard also pointed to the Canada.ca website and the WeatherCAN mobile app.
Environment Canada also operates a number of continuous marine broadcast stations, and Bayard said those stations will continue. The stations cover most Canadian marine regions, including the Great Lakes, Manitoba Lakes and Great Slave Lake.
Weatheradio Canada first broadcast in Montreal and nine other cities in 1976, according to Stephen Balena of The Suburban in Saint-Laurent, Quebec.
The service received a Specific Area Message Encoding technology upgrade in 2004.
Akin to the timeline for U.S.-based NOAA Weather Radio, computer-generated voices took over broadcasts in the early 2000s.
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