Detecting Severe Weather

Canada’s Doppler Weather Radar and Lightning Networks

Severe weather such as thunderstorms, lightning, tornadoes, hail, heavy rain, and blizzards frequently lead to loss of life and damage to property. In the 1980s, tornadoes in Ontario and Alberta killed 35 people. On average, lightning kills about 7 and injures 60 or 70 people in Canada each year. In 1998, the ice storm in eastern Canada resulted in damages over 4.2 billion dollars.

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A radar image from Environment Canada's King City Doppler radar for a freezing rain event that occurred on February 15, 1990.

The ability of operational forecasters to provide sufficient warning of these and other weather related hazards is highly dependent on the Meteorological Service of Canada's MSC ability to process and interpret a large quantity of observational measurements from radars, satellites and surface meteorological stations.

Over the past several years, MSC has invested heavily in two operational networks, the Doppler Radar Network and the Canadian Lightning Detection Network. The Doppler Radar Network consists of a string of 30 Doppler radars, each with a detection area of 250 km in radius, in total covering 90 to 95 percent of Canada's population. The Lightning Detection Network covers most of Canada. It enables meteorologists to detect and monitor thunderstorms at an early stage of their development, and provides invaluable support for the identification of areas with high forest fire potential. Both networks are integrated with similar U.S. networks, and together they provide an unprecedented ability for forecasters to identify severe weather and provide public warnings.

In the past decade, MSC scientists, meteorologists and computer programmers have made considerable progress in developing forecasting applications of radar measurements and have become world leaders in radar meteorology. Their achievements include doubling the range and substantially increasing the sensitivity of radar measurements, as well as halving the cost of radar hardware.

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A composite image of all Doppler radar stations across Canada.

In the regional forecast offices, a single forecaster must keep watch over two million square kilometres, while at the same time delving into the details of a single thunderstorm that is only about 100 square kilometres in area. The Doppler Radar Network now provides the surveillance capability required to meet these forecasting needs. As a result, Canada has one of the leading severe weather forecasting systems in the world.

A composite GOES visible satellite image made from 12 images taken on August 24, 1998.The blue Xs are negative lightning flashes and the red Xs are positive flashes.

“The MSC radar group is unquestionably one of the world's leaders in nowcasting convective storms.”
Jim Wilson
Senior Scientist National Centre for Atmospheric Research USA

Meteorological Service of Canada - Environment Canada - Government of Canada

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