The storm warnings issued by Environment Canada Friday in Manitoba should have come sooner, with stronger language, says a former Environment Canada meteorologist.

Jay Anderson said the weather service fell short when it comes to the timing and wording of Friday's watches and warnings.

"What's really needed is for some way of emphasizing the tornado potential of a severe thunderstorm watch," said Anderson, who is part of the meteorology department at the University of Manitoba.

"Right now, the statement that Environment Canada issues when they put out a severe thunderstorm warning — the statement that they have about tornadoes is pretty weak."

Cuts in federal funding to Environment Canada over the past decade and the consolidation of weather offices in the 1990s have had a serious impact on weather forecasts, Anderson said.

Watches and warnings

Environment Canada issues a severe thunderstorm watch when "conditions are likely for the development of thunderstorms, some of which may become severe thunderstorms with large hail, heavy rain, deadly lightning or damaging winds and possibly tornadoes." A severe thunderstorm warning is issued "when a severe storm has developed, producing one or more of the following conditions: flooding rain, destructive winds with gusts greater that 90 km/h, hail of at least 10 to 20 mm in diameter or intense lightning. Severe thunderstorms may also produce tornadoes." A tornado watch is issued when severe thunderstorms have developed and "there is the possibility of one or more tornadoes developing." A tornado warning is issued when "one or more tornadoes are occurring in the area specified or detected on Doppler radar." Source: Environment Canada

"Even when I was working for Environment Canada, try as hard as we could, we were always falling a little bit farther behind, a little bit farther behind," said Anderson, who worked as a forecaster for more than 30 years.

"We tend to be using techniques which are 1970- and 1980-based now, except for what we find on U.S. websites that come to us and have information from over the border. We're kind of playing catch-up all the time," he said.

Since the office consolidations in the 1990s, Ottawa earmarked $72 million in new spending to improve forecasting. Half of that has gone to improve and upgrade Environment Canada's radar system, Anderson said, but more is needed.
      
"We seem to have spent the last half of that $72 million in the infrastructure, the management, the bureacracy, without spending it on the deliverables to the person on the ground, to the public."

Education is also an issue, he said, suggesting staff cuts have left the service scrambling to fill shifts, instead of sending employees on training seminars to learn the latest innovations in forecasting.

No one from federal Environment Minister Jim Baird's office was available to comment.

'Impossible to be precise'

A tornado ripped through Elie, Man., west of Winnipeg, between 6:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., destroying four homes and damaging several others.

A severe thunderstorm watch had been in effect for most of southern Manitoba since around 1:30 p.m. Friday, but Environment Canada did not issue weather warnings for the Elie area until 6:40 p.m., after a twister touched down in the area.  

Just before 6 p.m., Dave Carlsen, an official with Environment Canada, told CBC Radio that the black clouds to the west of Winnipeg didn't pose a serious threat.

"Right now they aren't exhibiting anything severe," Carlsen said. "There is still a slight chance they could become severe, so for that reason we do have a severe thunderstorm watch out."

Less than half of an hour later, that slight chance developed into a tornado rated F-4, the second-strongest type of tornado on the Fujita scale, with wind speeds as high as 420 kilometres per hour. The twister was on the ground for at least 30 minutes.

Dale Marciski, a meteorologist with the federal agency, said severe weather forecasters did the best they could.

"We would love to be able to put out tornado warnings hours and hours in advance, but it's really very, very difficult to do that because they are such a small-scale event, when you think of it," he said.

"Even the tornado that hit Elie was 300 metres wide — well, if you think of southern Manitoba, that's a very, very small area, so it's impossible to be precise about it and where actually that tornado is going to form out of those severe thunderstorms."

Storm-chasers 'network' needed?

Reed Timmer, a storm chaser from Oklahoma, said he knew the twister was coming at least 24 hours in advance and drove through the night to get to Manitoba in time to watch the storm.

"We look at several ingredients in the numeric models, the long-range computer models. We look at instability, which is moisture and heat, basically, and also at wind shear, and especially at the low levels," said Timmer, who is working on his Ph.D. in Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma.

"Both those factors looked very favourable over the Canadian Prairies, especially southwest Manitoba for Saturday."

Environment Canada did a good job warning people with the resources it has in warning people, Timmer said, but it could have been better.

"I think that we can help in the warning process. Just like in the U.S., I think if Canada had a dense network of storm chasers, that would help Environment Canada substantially in the warning process," he said.

Timmer's all-night drive to Canada was worth the trip, from a storm-chaser's perspective: he and a colleage captured dramatic video footage of an enormous funnel cloud crossing a road less than 200 metres away from them.