There will be more people keeping an eye to the sky this summer as the severe weather season approaches.
Environment Canada drew a full house of nearly 100 people to the Bruce Power Visitors Centre for a training session for the CANWARN program.
Warning Preparedness Meteorologist Geoff Coulson says the program allows volunteers to report real-time severe weather updates to Environment Canada, providing an on-the-ground record of what the forecasters are seeing on their radar screens.
He says the CANWARN program has become increasingly important for meteorologists since the advance of social media.
"It's getting more people to be the eyes and ears of Environment Canada, giving us credible reports, and really, the key is credible," says Coulson. "In our society right now, I can get a lot of reports, but I have to do legwork to figure out 'are they real', I've got to ground-truth them, is there something on radar in that area, does it make sense?"
Coulson adds having storm spotters in this area is of great benefit, because storms tend to arrive off the shores of Lake Huron and there's a need for immediate information on what the storms are doing as they approach land.
He says the CANWARN program has seen an increase in popularity in this area, largely as a result of the Goderich tornado in 2011.
Coulson says Environment Canada has about 6,000 CANWARN volunteers across the province and they will continue to train more people this year.
