Prairie storm chaser and severe weather specialist Jenny Hagan relies on national weather data while out on the field.
She braves tornadoes and blizzards to capture storm images and inform the public about weather patterns.
She says cuts to radar research by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) will make that job more difficult.
Its radar research team has recently been disbanded and radar technology won’t be further developed.
Radars provide real-time data about immediate conditions, which help ECCC issue timely warnings to the public.
“Those radar capabilities can let us know everything from the wind speeds being carried in those storms to the possible hail sizes that sit in those storms,” Hagan said.
“It kind of allows us to know how close we can get to this storm to get the information to get out to the public, or how far we need to stay away because of some highly dangerous conditions in that storm.”
Every radar in Canada, including those Hagan uses, feeds off of ECCC’s radar system.
Hagan said she’d like to see improvements to the system, instead of cuts to its research team.
“It really kind of holds us back a lot on the information that we can gather when we’re out in the field, in order to keep not just ourselves safe, but the general public,” she said.
ECCC would not discuss staffing changes.
It confirmed in a statement that changes to radar research have been made, but said it will continue to provide expertise in maintaining Canada’s radar network.
Experts say Canada’s radars were already 15 years behind the capabilities of those in the U.S.
Lee Stanley, a farmer near the U.S. border in Carievale, Sask., said he relies on the U.S. radars instead of Canada’s.
“I can kind of rely on some American apps,” Stanley said. “But it would be nice to see the Canadian government and the Saskatchewan government invest a little bit more in forecasting.”
Farmers’ livelihoods depend on the forecast.
A recent windstorm left Stanley with costly property damage, but he commended ECCC for issuing warnings days before it happened.
“It’s good to know what’s coming, but there’s really very little you can do if you’re going to get hit with 120-kilometer winds,” Stanley said.