Eyes on the skies

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This article was published 05/09/2016 (3548 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg has received its share of interesting weather this summer. 

Natalie Hasell, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said city’s weather this summer has kept staff busy at the forecast office, adding southern Manitoba has experienced a lot of storms throughout the evenings and overnight. 

Normally, Hasell said, such disturbances occur during the day, but the provincial capital has experienced many strong storms late into the evening. 

“It’s certainly been a summer for lightning shows,” she said. 

Some of these storms developed into tornadoes, with a few touching down in southern parts of the province. It’s difficult to outline what’s considered “normal” when it comes to tornadoes and other severe types of weather because the technology people have access to is always evolving, Hasell said.

With the growth of populations (and cities and towns), she said, there are more people around to witness outstanding weather events. 

“So, whereas now, if something happened or if somebody thought that they were having a rather good lunch, they could take a photo of it and send it to social media within seconds, right?” she said. “Not even five years ago, it would take a very long time to get that type of information.”

It was only a few years ago, weather-interested people would have had to share information solely via email: first taking photos of weather with a digital camera, downloading the photos, sending them to Environment Canada and then calling the office to make sure it received the photo, Hasell said.

“I would say we’re actually seeing, not necessarily more severe thunderstorm events, just more severe thunderstorm event reports,” said Hasell. “Because we’re all tuned into things like Twitter, Facebook and so on… are we actually seeing more events? Well, I can say maybe, but I don’t know. But we’re certainly getting many more reports of the same events.

“There are many more people in these places than there used to be.”