Environment Canada is asking Yukoners to report serious weather conditions using Twitter as part of a test program to track weather in areas where there may not be any weather stations.

People who notice weather events such as hail, wind damage, flooding or large amounts of snowfall or rainfall are asked to tweet the information with the hashtag “ytstorm” and include their location and the time period when the weather occurred.

“For years we've had volunteer severe weather watchers that have different methods of communicating with us about severe weather and this will kind of open the door to anyone submitting reports,” said meteorologist David Jones.

“We don't have weather stations all over, so sometimes the forecasters are a bit blind.”

Environment Canada’s Meteorological Services staff will be searching Twitter for reports of unusual or significant weather from Yukon and B.C. People in British Columbia are being asked to use the hashtag "bcstorm."

Jones said people are also encouraged to post a picture with each tweet.

Environment Canada will evaluate the program in the spring to see whether it's a valuable tool for meteorologists.

Jones said the department doesn't have the capacity to respond to people's individual tweets.