Canadians can now receive Environment Canada’s weather alerts directly on their mobile device or computer via Twitter.
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Macdonald said Environment Canada had to work closely with Twitter to allow for the massive number of automated tweets they expect to send during unsafe weather.
“With the growing use of social media and smartphones, there are different ways available to help environment Canada extend the reach of its weather alerts and make them more accessible to Canadians”, Aglukkaq said.
Steve Ladurantaye, Twitter Canada’s head of news and government partnerships, called it the first system of its kind in the world.
The announcement was made by the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of the Environment, Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Minister for the Arctic Council, as well as Jacques Gourde, Member of Parliament for Lotbinière.
Canadians can now follow their own community for alert information.
Environment Canada now has more than 1,650 separate Twitter accounts, one in both French and English for each of the cities it offers weather information for on its website (Winnipeg has two because the service has weather stations at The Forks and the airport). Weather alerts will be sent 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The alerts will appear in the Twitter feed of users who subscribe.
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An annual average of 25,000 alerts is expected to be tweeted in total for all communities served by the new system. According to Gourde, this new service has cost “close to nothing”.
