12 ms·

Closure of the Weatheradio service in Canada

124 points by da768 7mo ago

bkd 7mo ago
Related I think - The Hello Weather/Bonjour Météo Canada toll-free 833 phone numbers are shutting down on March 16th if that hasn't been mentioned. I archive daily calls to selected time-and-temp phone numbers 1-833-794-3556 # Hello Weather Canada (English) 1-833-586-3836 # Hello Weather Canada (French) I'm archiving these until they go dark. I'll probably put the calls immediately before and after on my YT time-and-temp channel.
palmotea 7mo ago
Is this the Canadian equivalent of the US NOAA Weather Radio service? If so, that sucks. The last Tornado Warning in my area did not trigger the weather alert of my phone, but it did trigger our weather radio. It's also very useful for people who don't speak English, as you can just set up a weather radio in their home with only the severe alerts enable, then simply explain "if this makes noise, shelter in place." Edit: Guess so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada. I wonder if this is some kind "decoupling" with the US, as the article states it "is an official partner of the [US] National Weather Service," and the decommissioning seems abrupt and no reason was given.
ToddWBurgess 7mo ago
I am a ham radio operator and also a member of Radio Amateurs of Canada. As we all know, the weather can be a matter of life and death and it is important Canadians have access to the latest weather. I am glad that RAC is taking up the cause for Canadians. In many parts of the country weather radio services parts of the country that don't have reliable Internet or AM/FM radio broadcasts. 73
willis936 7mo ago
Why was this done?
- pyreko 7mo ago
  First guess is that it's due to the federal government cutting some stuff... and things like this are usually the first to go.
  - autoexec 7mo ago
    Things like this are usually the last things to go which is how the system has survived so long. It's a brain dead move to endanger public health and safety to save pennies by killing off simple and reliable infrastructure. Especially when disasters are only expected to get worse and more frequent.
- jszymborski 7mo ago
  The current govt is on a bit of an austerity kick at the moment, particularly wrt staffing of public bodies. Would be surprised if this simply wasn't a casualty of that.
  - icegreentea2 7mo ago
    I don't think it's 100% accurate to call the budget "austerity". The budget projects increases in both revenue and spending, and increases the deficit by ~50% percent. What the government has asked for is widespread cuts across the board from current programs and operations (and staffing) to try to make more room for new spending in new areas. They are targeting getting to ~$13 billion CAD reduction in annual operations cost by end of decade. By contrast, there are a lot of major spending programs - ~$10 billion CAD added to the defense budget, ~$5 billion CAD in tariff relief.
  - appreciatorBus 7mo ago
    The current govt is planning for us to spend $78B more than we take in, about $2,000 per person. That seems pretty far from austerity.
- Marsymars 7mo ago
  The government hasn't made much/any public comment on it that I've seen. There is this reddit comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1rdgh9e/starting_march_16_2026_weatheradio_and_hello/o7aedqr/ https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1rdgh9e/start... > From one of my internal sources at ECCC, basically they’re completely overhauling the warning system right now. We had the colour coded warnings implemented in November but the real massive change is the convective alert system which is moving to free form polygons and automatic storm tracking this spring. Basically combined with the fact they’re also changing over to semi-automatic phrasing on all warnings, the cost to upgrade the weather radio network to be capable of handling the convective alert changes would be wayyy to much to warrant it. They have already had to basically completely gut the way they issue CAP files to alert ready which has delayed the project by at least a year and put the budget over by god knows how much. Given the relative low use of WRC, and the enormous cost (we’re talking in the 10s of millions here) I can understand why. I will miss it. I have fond memories of being at my cottage listening to Severe Thunderstorm warnings while watching those beautiful summer storms move over the lake. WRC will alas become another part of our history.
robmusial 7mo ago
I hate to see this. I bought a Sangean AM/FM/Weather radio with NOAA All Hazards alerting a little while back (I've been extremely happy with it) and as I was programming it wondered how long until either a group like DOGE, or private interest who wanted to repurpose these radio bands would cause such a wonderful service to go away. Maybe I'm naive but I'm surprised it happened in Canada before it happened here in the U.S.
- palmotea 7mo ago
  > or private interest who wanted to repurpose these radio bands would cause such a wonderful service to go away IIRC, the radio bands are some marine VHF channels. I'm not sure if those can be repurposed.
- amatecha 7mo ago
  Yeah, super disappointing. Not only do many of my amateur radio transceivers tune to the weather FM frequencies, I just picked up a cheap low-power receiver for the purpose of having something that can last a long time during extended power outages, if necessary -- with the idea of being able to keep up with local radio and weather radio during those times. I assumed Canada of all places will keep these kind of services going indefinitely, because they are pretty important when all else fails.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  They already went at NOAA with cuts and firings. If there's no national weather service there'll be nothing to broadcast (and less data on climate change)
kotaKat 7mo ago
I'd noticed something was going on lately. I sent an email over two months ago to Environment Canada about a station near Brockville (VFK721) repeating its intro statement over and over again without a forecast and never got a reply from them. The station's still broken. I guess the stations are just stuck right now live transmitting possibly not even a forecast, just an endless station ID announcement.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
bhouston 7mo ago
While I understand the nostalgia, as a Canadian I wasn't even aware this was a thing. We still have CBC radio that broadcast weather reports, and whether reports are still available on the internet. If I understand correctly, this service was for people who didn't have internet access, which with cell service, StarLink (yeah, Elon Musk, I know but it has been a game charger in remote communities) and similar services is become a very small minority of individuals. I think we have to not maintain things that are older tech and unused and focus on things that are the future. If we didn't, we'd still have roads maintained for horse and buggies.
- rapind 7mo ago
  > If I understand correctly, this service was for people who didn't have internet access, which with cell service, StarLink and similar services is become a very small minority of individuals. You'd be surprised at how bad cell service is in Canadian areas that aren't even considered "boonies". There are often times when you're driving without cell service or any other options.
  - bhouston 7mo ago
    I agree with that. Cell service in Canada is centred around cities and non-minor roads with most every that isn't in those categories it gets spotty pretty quickly and the non-existent. https://www.planhub.ca/planhub/coverage-map https://www.planhub.ca/planhub/coverage-map
- mikestorrent 7mo ago
  > people who didn't have internet access, which with cell service, StarLink (yeah, Elon Musk, I know but it has been a game charger in remote communities) and similar services I'm not bringing Starlink on a week-long kayak voyage. My cousin isn't bringing it on his hiking and hunting trip in the bush. There's no cell service out there - radio is all you get, at best. This might not be tremendously well used, but there was and continues to be utility for radio broadcasting that one can receive on a cheap low-powered device for free with no subscription in the middle of nowhere. None of your suggestions touch that. > we'd still have roads maintained for horse and buggies. Do you leave the city, much? Ever drive up an FSR?
jmclnx 7mo ago
Sad to see things like this close, the US had a some similar stations that have closed over the years. I think these stations are still useful in this day and age. The costs of these stations were probably like change one find in their sofa. But in the US, there is always enough funds for killing people, little for keeping people alive and safe. The same may be starting to happen in Canada too, they probably need to start increasing they defense spending due to changing winds from the south.
TutleCpt 7mo ago
I'm starting to wonder how many Canadians are on Hacker News. This after seeing the BC Time Zone story as well as this one. Just curious, really. I'm wondering what the country breakdown is for Hacker News users.
- Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
  Canada has an educated population, large online presence, and many folks operate within both the US/Canada under dual citizenship. One can find them in every field from medicine to high energy physics. If the Corporation is type S it is purely US citizen owned, but most are type C thanks to the great work by AMCHAM attracting global investment. Notably, most science is done on UTC time... because politicians were always functionally ignorant about the collateral costs of arbitrary technology policy changes. Evey village usually has at least one idiot. =3
  - technothrasher 7mo ago
    > If the Corporation is type S it is purely US citizen owned Purely US resident owned, not US citizen owned. Resident aliens, who are not citizens, can have ownership in an S corp.
    - Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
      Out of an abundance of caution, please talk with AMCHAM, and a local tax lawyer first. In most cases, founders almost always want to form a type C corporate entity within their largest trading state. People often do whatever they like, but whether it is locally legal is not a YOLO/LLM matter. Best of luck =3
- consumer451 7mo ago
  Based on my own lived bias and HN addiction... The leading demographic has to be West Coast of the USA, then the multinational PNW as the most active HN users. Again, I am biased, but as far as HN bias goes, that ain't bad. These are amazing places chock-full of the coolest people. After decades of the West Coast life I now live in rest of world, and wish that rest of world could be so lucky.
teuobk 7mo ago
Here's a map I put together of the Weatheradio (one "r"!) service coverage in Canada, assuming each station has a range of 60 km: https://www.keacher.com/files/dir12/weatheradio_map2.png https://www.keacher.com/files/dir12/weatheradio_map2.png Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coverage is most dense where the population density is also highest, with some exceptions. And if anybody is curious, here's the coverage for the equivalent Weather Radio service in the United States: https://www.weather.gov/nwr/maps https://www.weather.gov/nwr/maps
- Aloha 7mo ago
  I'd actually assume closer to 100km of coverage, 60 miles or so is a conservative estimate of coverage, in the prairies I would expect it to go much further - 500w of output on high band VHF goes quite quite far - I know how far the US NWS stations cover, and its much closer to 60+ miles.
  - teuobk 7mo ago
    Environment Canada assumes 60 km on their Weatheradio page ( https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/weatheradio/find-your-network.html https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services... ), so that's what I went with. Having said that, I very much agree that the range is probably considerably greater in many cases.
  - Marsymars 7mo ago
    While there are a handful of 500W stations, most are in the 100-200W range: https://www.qsl.net/ve7hce/weatherradio.htm https://www.qsl.net/ve7hce/weatherradio.htm
opengrass 7mo ago
Only boaters use this.
stego-tech 7mo ago
Serious question: might the solution be a satellite broadcast in the clear, a la DVB-S but for data, audio, or video? Weather radio is a critical service, and even if traditional AM/FM or RF signals are deprecated, there should still be a way for anyone - no matter how remote - to get safety and meteorology information from the government. Given that its constant availability is more important than latency or bandwidth, it feels like an appropriate use for GEO satellites broadcasting down over a large area in the clear, such that any basic SDR and a cheap dish could grab the signal with minimal fuss.
- msla 7mo ago
  Yeah. I'm down on commercial AM/FM radio being touted as an emergency service, because there's so rarely enough behind the scenes to make it reliable or even minimally usable as such, but this is something purpose-built to fill that role, and shutting it down means there's nothing which can fill it, given how worthless commercial radio is at the task: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_train_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_train_derailment > Because it was the middle of the night, there were few people at local radio stations, all operated by Clear Channel with mostly automated programming. No formal emergency warnings were issued for several hours while Minot officials located station managers at home. North Dakota's public radio network, Prairie Public Broadcasting, was notified and did broadcast warnings to citizens. If you wanted to make commercial radio even minimally acceptable as an emergency alert system you'd be... guess what... reinventing EAS and EAS-a-likes, except more expensive and less responsive! EAS never has to "Interrupt This Program" it can just get to the meat.
  - autoexec 7mo ago
    > If you wanted to make commercial radio even minimally acceptable as an emergency alert system you'd be... guess what... reinventing EAS and EAS-a-likes, except more expensive Exactly, whatever it costs to operate and maintain the emergency and weather services commercial radio would need to make enough money to pay for that, and then also make enough money on top of that to stuff their pockets with profit. The people shouldn't be on the hook for those extra expenses while private companies do everything in their power to degrade the service in order to lower their costs to increase profits even farther.
amatecha 7mo ago
Pretty boneheaded move. Yeah I'll download your app (???) so I can listen to critical weather information on my phone that can't even stay powered on an entire day without charging... Cool, guess I'll just take a wild guess as to how this extreme weather is going to proceed. The whole point of these services is their resilience and the fact you can depend on them. Some fragile-ass mobile phone shit is not a suitable replacement for that whatsoever. Totally inexcusable.
ipcress_file 7mo ago
So I'm guessing that this is what those stylish wood grain Weatheradio cubes in the Radio Shack catalog were for?
oldnetguy 7mo ago
If this is a money issue can someone else take over? I mean can they raise money for it. I'm not Canadaian but I'll donate.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  I'd be willing to bet that Canada takes in more than enough tax payer dollars to cover the expense of this critical service. I'd even be willing to bet that there's more than enough tax payer money just in waste and fraud to cover the expense if somebody cared to dig into the finances and government contracts to track it down. The idea of cutting this service as a cost savings measure is laughable.
  - nubinetwork 7mo ago
    I'd be willing to bet that the government didn't want to run it anymore, so they asked pelmorex... pelmorex probably said "pay me", and the government said "well I guess we'll just shut it down"...
arian_ 7mo ago
Replacing a system that works with no internet, no power grid, and no account with "just use your phone" is not an upgrade.
jdalgetty 7mo ago
One less thing to listen to on my radio scanner :(
tokyobreakfast 7mo ago
This is brain damage levels of decision-making. If you live in a portion of the US that has severe weather, a NOAA weather radio with the EAS alerting function is a mandatory addition to your home. It could be the difference between life or death. See: first five minutes of Twister. Inexpensive, AC powered with battery backup and it always works. No internet, no cell tower needed, which was likely just trashed by the storm you're trying to shelter from. Fun fact these radios can warn you about more than weather. "Radiological Hazard Warning" and "Volcano Warning" to name a few. Many more people died in decades past from severe weather and natural disasters precisely because of inadequate advance warning. So naturally they would migrate people to...a replacement orders of magnitude more unreliable.
Marsymars 7mo ago
I sent a letter to my MP the day after receiving the administrative alert on my radio last week, explaining how weather radio has directly led to me avoiding significant property damage in the past couple years. Doesn't feel like there's a whole lot else I can do. Guess I'll sell my weather radio on eBay in a few weeks, since there won't be any market for it locally.
Aloha 7mo ago
This seems insane, particularly given the short notice period for the shutdown.

124 points by da768 7mo ago

bkd 7mo ago

Related I think - The Hello Weather/Bonjour Météo Canada toll-free 833 phone numbers are shutting down on March 16th if that hasn't been mentioned. I archive daily calls to selected time-and-temp phone numbers 1-833-794-3556 # Hello Weather Canada (English) 1-833-586-3836 # Hello Weather Canada (French) I'm archiving these until they go dark. I'll probably put the calls immediately before and after on my YT time-and-temp channel.

palmotea 7mo ago

Is this the Canadian equivalent of the US NOAA Weather Radio service? If so, that sucks. The last Tornado Warning in my area did not trigger the weather alert of my phone, but it did trigger our weather radio. It's also very useful for people who don't speak English, as you can just set up a weather radio in their home with only the severe alerts enable, then simply explain "if this makes noise, shelter in place." Edit: Guess so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada. I wonder if this is some kind "decoupling" with the US, as the article states it "is an official partner of the [US] National Weather Service," and the decommissioning seems abrupt and no reason was given.

ToddWBurgess 7mo ago

I am a ham radio operator and also a member of Radio Amateurs of Canada. As we all know, the weather can be a matter of life and death and it is important Canadians have access to the latest weather. I am glad that RAC is taking up the cause for Canadians. In many parts of the country weather radio services parts of the country that don't have reliable Internet or AM/FM radio broadcasts. 73

willis936 7mo ago

Why was this done?

pyreko 7mo ago
First guess is that it's due to the federal government cutting some stuff... and things like this are usually the first to go.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  Things like this are usually the last things to go which is how the system has survived so long. It's a brain dead move to endanger public health and safety to save pennies by killing off simple and reliable infrastructure. Especially when disasters are only expected to get worse and more frequent.
jszymborski 7mo ago
The current govt is on a bit of an austerity kick at the moment, particularly wrt staffing of public bodies. Would be surprised if this simply wasn't a casualty of that.
- icegreentea2 7mo ago
  I don't think it's 100% accurate to call the budget "austerity". The budget projects increases in both revenue and spending, and increases the deficit by ~50% percent. What the government has asked for is widespread cuts across the board from current programs and operations (and staffing) to try to make more room for new spending in new areas. They are targeting getting to ~$13 billion CAD reduction in annual operations cost by end of decade. By contrast, there are a lot of major spending programs - ~$10 billion CAD added to the defense budget, ~$5 billion CAD in tariff relief.
- appreciatorBus 7mo ago
  The current govt is planning for us to spend $78B more than we take in, about $2,000 per person. That seems pretty far from austerity.
Marsymars 7mo ago
The government hasn't made much/any public comment on it that I've seen. There is this reddit comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1rdgh9e/starting_march_16_2026_weatheradio_and_hello/o7aedqr/ https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1rdgh9e/start... > From one of my internal sources at ECCC, basically they’re completely overhauling the warning system right now. We had the colour coded warnings implemented in November but the real massive change is the convective alert system which is moving to free form polygons and automatic storm tracking this spring. Basically combined with the fact they’re also changing over to semi-automatic phrasing on all warnings, the cost to upgrade the weather radio network to be capable of handling the convective alert changes would be wayyy to much to warrant it. They have already had to basically completely gut the way they issue CAP files to alert ready which has delayed the project by at least a year and put the budget over by god knows how much. Given the relative low use of WRC, and the enormous cost (we’re talking in the 10s of millions here) I can understand why. I will miss it. I have fond memories of being at my cottage listening to Severe Thunderstorm warnings while watching those beautiful summer storms move over the lake. WRC will alas become another part of our history.

robmusial 7mo ago

I hate to see this. I bought a Sangean AM/FM/Weather radio with NOAA All Hazards alerting a little while back (I've been extremely happy with it) and as I was programming it wondered how long until either a group like DOGE, or private interest who wanted to repurpose these radio bands would cause such a wonderful service to go away. Maybe I'm naive but I'm surprised it happened in Canada before it happened here in the U.S.

palmotea 7mo ago
> or private interest who wanted to repurpose these radio bands would cause such a wonderful service to go away IIRC, the radio bands are some marine VHF channels. I'm not sure if those can be repurposed.
amatecha 7mo ago
Yeah, super disappointing. Not only do many of my amateur radio transceivers tune to the weather FM frequencies, I just picked up a cheap low-power receiver for the purpose of having something that can last a long time during extended power outages, if necessary -- with the idea of being able to keep up with local radio and weather radio during those times. I assumed Canada of all places will keep these kind of services going indefinitely, because they are pretty important when all else fails.
autoexec 7mo ago
They already went at NOAA with cuts and firings. If there's no national weather service there'll be nothing to broadcast (and less data on climate change)

kotaKat 7mo ago

I'd noticed something was going on lately. I sent an email over two months ago to Environment Canada about a station near Brockville (VFK721) repeating its intro statement over and over again without a forecast and never got a reply from them. The station's still broken. I guess the stations are just stuck right now live transmitting possibly not even a forecast, just an endless station ID announcement.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

bhouston 7mo ago

While I understand the nostalgia, as a Canadian I wasn't even aware this was a thing. We still have CBC radio that broadcast weather reports, and whether reports are still available on the internet. If I understand correctly, this service was for people who didn't have internet access, which with cell service, StarLink (yeah, Elon Musk, I know but it has been a game charger in remote communities) and similar services is become a very small minority of individuals. I think we have to not maintain things that are older tech and unused and focus on things that are the future. If we didn't, we'd still have roads maintained for horse and buggies.

rapind 7mo ago
> If I understand correctly, this service was for people who didn't have internet access, which with cell service, StarLink and similar services is become a very small minority of individuals. You'd be surprised at how bad cell service is in Canadian areas that aren't even considered "boonies". There are often times when you're driving without cell service or any other options.
- bhouston 7mo ago
  I agree with that. Cell service in Canada is centred around cities and non-minor roads with most every that isn't in those categories it gets spotty pretty quickly and the non-existent. https://www.planhub.ca/planhub/coverage-map https://www.planhub.ca/planhub/coverage-map
mikestorrent 7mo ago
> people who didn't have internet access, which with cell service, StarLink (yeah, Elon Musk, I know but it has been a game charger in remote communities) and similar services I'm not bringing Starlink on a week-long kayak voyage. My cousin isn't bringing it on his hiking and hunting trip in the bush. There's no cell service out there - radio is all you get, at best. This might not be tremendously well used, but there was and continues to be utility for radio broadcasting that one can receive on a cheap low-powered device for free with no subscription in the middle of nowhere. None of your suggestions touch that. > we'd still have roads maintained for horse and buggies. Do you leave the city, much? Ever drive up an FSR?

jmclnx 7mo ago

Sad to see things like this close, the US had a some similar stations that have closed over the years. I think these stations are still useful in this day and age. The costs of these stations were probably like change one find in their sofa. But in the US, there is always enough funds for killing people, little for keeping people alive and safe. The same may be starting to happen in Canada too, they probably need to start increasing they defense spending due to changing winds from the south.

TutleCpt 7mo ago

I'm starting to wonder how many Canadians are on Hacker News. This after seeing the BC Time Zone story as well as this one. Just curious, really. I'm wondering what the country breakdown is for Hacker News users.

Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
Canada has an educated population, large online presence, and many folks operate within both the US/Canada under dual citizenship. One can find them in every field from medicine to high energy physics. If the Corporation is type S it is purely US citizen owned, but most are type C thanks to the great work by AMCHAM attracting global investment. Notably, most science is done on UTC time... because politicians were always functionally ignorant about the collateral costs of arbitrary technology policy changes. Evey village usually has at least one idiot. =3
- technothrasher 7mo ago
  > If the Corporation is type S it is purely US citizen owned Purely US resident owned, not US citizen owned. Resident aliens, who are not citizens, can have ownership in an S corp.
  - Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
    Out of an abundance of caution, please talk with AMCHAM, and a local tax lawyer first. In most cases, founders almost always want to form a type C corporate entity within their largest trading state. People often do whatever they like, but whether it is locally legal is not a YOLO/LLM matter. Best of luck =3
consumer451 7mo ago
Based on my own lived bias and HN addiction... The leading demographic has to be West Coast of the USA, then the multinational PNW as the most active HN users. Again, I am biased, but as far as HN bias goes, that ain't bad. These are amazing places chock-full of the coolest people. After decades of the West Coast life I now live in rest of world, and wish that rest of world could be so lucky.

teuobk 7mo ago

Here's a map I put together of the Weatheradio (one "r"!) service coverage in Canada, assuming each station has a range of 60 km: https://www.keacher.com/files/dir12/weatheradio_map2.png https://www.keacher.com/files/dir12/weatheradio_map2.png Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coverage is most dense where the population density is also highest, with some exceptions. And if anybody is curious, here's the coverage for the equivalent Weather Radio service in the United States: https://www.weather.gov/nwr/maps https://www.weather.gov/nwr/maps

Aloha 7mo ago
I'd actually assume closer to 100km of coverage, 60 miles or so is a conservative estimate of coverage, in the prairies I would expect it to go much further - 500w of output on high band VHF goes quite quite far - I know how far the US NWS stations cover, and its much closer to 60+ miles.
- teuobk 7mo ago
  Environment Canada assumes 60 km on their Weatheradio page ( https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/weatheradio/find-your-network.html https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services... ), so that's what I went with. Having said that, I very much agree that the range is probably considerably greater in many cases.
- Marsymars 7mo ago
  While there are a handful of 500W stations, most are in the 100-200W range: https://www.qsl.net/ve7hce/weatherradio.htm https://www.qsl.net/ve7hce/weatherradio.htm

opengrass 7mo ago

Only boaters use this.

stego-tech 7mo ago

Serious question: might the solution be a satellite broadcast in the clear, a la DVB-S but for data, audio, or video? Weather radio is a critical service, and even if traditional AM/FM or RF signals are deprecated, there should still be a way for anyone - no matter how remote - to get safety and meteorology information from the government. Given that its constant availability is more important than latency or bandwidth, it feels like an appropriate use for GEO satellites broadcasting down over a large area in the clear, such that any basic SDR and a cheap dish could grab the signal with minimal fuss.

msla 7mo ago
Yeah. I'm down on commercial AM/FM radio being touted as an emergency service, because there's so rarely enough behind the scenes to make it reliable or even minimally usable as such, but this is something purpose-built to fill that role, and shutting it down means there's nothing which can fill it, given how worthless commercial radio is at the task: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_train_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_train_derailment > Because it was the middle of the night, there were few people at local radio stations, all operated by Clear Channel with mostly automated programming. No formal emergency warnings were issued for several hours while Minot officials located station managers at home. North Dakota's public radio network, Prairie Public Broadcasting, was notified and did broadcast warnings to citizens. If you wanted to make commercial radio even minimally acceptable as an emergency alert system you'd be... guess what... reinventing EAS and EAS-a-likes, except more expensive and less responsive! EAS never has to "Interrupt This Program" it can just get to the meat.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  > If you wanted to make commercial radio even minimally acceptable as an emergency alert system you'd be... guess what... reinventing EAS and EAS-a-likes, except more expensive Exactly, whatever it costs to operate and maintain the emergency and weather services commercial radio would need to make enough money to pay for that, and then also make enough money on top of that to stuff their pockets with profit. The people shouldn't be on the hook for those extra expenses while private companies do everything in their power to degrade the service in order to lower their costs to increase profits even farther.

amatecha 7mo ago

Pretty boneheaded move. Yeah I'll download your app (???) so I can listen to critical weather information on my phone that can't even stay powered on an entire day without charging... Cool, guess I'll just take a wild guess as to how this extreme weather is going to proceed. The whole point of these services is their resilience and the fact you can depend on them. Some fragile-ass mobile phone shit is not a suitable replacement for that whatsoever. Totally inexcusable.

ipcress_file 7mo ago

So I'm guessing that this is what those stylish wood grain Weatheradio cubes in the Radio Shack catalog were for?

oldnetguy 7mo ago

If this is a money issue can someone else take over? I mean can they raise money for it. I'm not Canadaian but I'll donate.

autoexec 7mo ago
I'd be willing to bet that Canada takes in more than enough tax payer dollars to cover the expense of this critical service. I'd even be willing to bet that there's more than enough tax payer money just in waste and fraud to cover the expense if somebody cared to dig into the finances and government contracts to track it down. The idea of cutting this service as a cost savings measure is laughable.
- nubinetwork 7mo ago
  I'd be willing to bet that the government didn't want to run it anymore, so they asked pelmorex... pelmorex probably said "pay me", and the government said "well I guess we'll just shut it down"...

arian_ 7mo ago

Replacing a system that works with no internet, no power grid, and no account with "just use your phone" is not an upgrade.

jdalgetty 7mo ago

One less thing to listen to on my radio scanner :(

tokyobreakfast 7mo ago

This is brain damage levels of decision-making. If you live in a portion of the US that has severe weather, a NOAA weather radio with the EAS alerting function is a mandatory addition to your home. It could be the difference between life or death. See: first five minutes of Twister. Inexpensive, AC powered with battery backup and it always works. No internet, no cell tower needed, which was likely just trashed by the storm you're trying to shelter from. Fun fact these radios can warn you about more than weather. "Radiological Hazard Warning" and "Volcano Warning" to name a few. Many more people died in decades past from severe weather and natural disasters precisely because of inadequate advance warning. So naturally they would migrate people to...a replacement orders of magnitude more unreliable.

Marsymars 7mo ago

I sent a letter to my MP the day after receiving the administrative alert on my radio last week, explaining how weather radio has directly led to me avoiding significant property damage in the past couple years. Doesn't feel like there's a whole lot else I can do. Guess I'll sell my weather radio on eBay in a few weeks, since there won't be any market for it locally.

Aloha 7mo ago

This seems insane, particularly given the short notice period for the shutdown.