Environment Canada Weather Stations

As I write this post, the following Environment Canada Weather stations are down, unserviceable, whatever you want to call it:

Saturna Island, down for at least 3 months,
Sandheads, down for at least a month,
Fanny Island, currently down, not sure for how long,
Sentry Shoal, down for at least 2 months,
East Dellwood, down at least 2 months.

https://weather.gc.ca/marine/weathe...ns_e.html?mapID=02&siteID=14305&stationID=WVF

This is UNACCEPTABLE!

I’ve been on EC’s case, but perhaps we’ll get some action on this if others chime in with your displeasure. You can contact them here:

https://weather.gc.ca/mainmenu/contact_us_e.html

They eventually respond.

Jim

Will do.

Last time I got an ambiguous reply.

JDCAVE said:

As I write this post, the following Environment Canada Weather stations are down, unserviceable, whatever you want to call it:

Saturna Island, down for at least 3 months,
Sandheads, down for at least a month,
Fanny Island, currently down, not sure for how long,
Sentry Shoal, down for at least 2 months,
East Dellwood, down at least 2 months.

https://weather.gc.ca/marine/weathe...ns_e.html?mapID=02&siteID=14305&stationID=WVF

This is UNACCEPTABLE!

I’ve been on EC’s case, but perhaps we’ll get some action on this if others chime in with your displeasure. You can contact them here:

https://weather.gc.ca/mainmenu/contact_us_e.html

They eventually respond.

Jim

Click to expand...

Since the advent of sites like Windy, EC has become almost irrelevant. Today, EC has a Strong Wind Warning for South of Nanaimo. Windy says 10 knots at the strongest in Georgia Strait and also gives local forecasting and current conditions that are much closer to the reality.
At my home, Windy says 4 knots. and it actually looks like this:

koliver said:

Since the advent of sites like Windy, EC has become almost irrelevant. Today, EC has a Strong Wind Warning for South of Nanaimo. Windy says 10 knots at the strongest in Georgia Strait and also gives local forecasting and current conditions that are much closer to the reality.
At my home, Windy says 4 knots. and it actually looks like this:

Click to expand...

Yes, but the weather stations provide near real time information, without which “Windy” and other forecasters would be dead in the water. Windy does not have weather stations, to my knowledge.

Jim

Windy is merely a predictive device based on models.

Windy does not use GEM25, which is the model EC uses.

EC has data. Windy does not.

I like to know when I'm heading out what is going on at Bellenas, Grief Point, Sisters, and Sentry Shoal. In the winter I pay attention to Solander.

If you like models, and picking and choosing your own predictions, I recommend MeteoBlue.

You can see 9 different models and the variations between them visually in the multimodel display for Powell River.

I like Windy. It is an excellent visual representation of predicted weather. But it is still only a model.

Northern Spy said:

Windy is merely a predictive device based on models.

Windy does not use GEM25, which is the model EC uses.

EC has data. Windy does not.

I like to know when I'm heading out what is going on at Bellenas, Grief Point, Sisters, and Sentry Shoal. In the winter I pay attention to Solander.

If you like models, and picking and choosing your own predictions, I recommend MeteoBlue.

You can see 9 different models and the variations between them visually in the multimodel display for Powell River.

I like Windy. It is an excellent visual representation of predicted weather. But it is still only a model.

Click to expand...

All good modellers do “hindcasting” which compares observed values versus predicted estimates. This is critical for tweaking model parameters and improving model estimation. The observed values come from weather stations. Data gaps are a pita.

If I recall, budget year ends beginning or end of March of every year for the government. I'm betting the repair budget has been eaten up by other issues for 2019 and the repairs for those items will appear in the 2020 budget.

You know, the Saturna station is accessed by ferry and car. How much does that cost?

I've contacted them before on this and just got an auto reply / form letter response. Fanny island has been down for months and is the only indicator of what's happening mid Johnstone Strait.

Northern Spy said:

Windy is merely a predictive device based on models.

Windy does not use GEM25, which is the model EC uses.

EC has data. Windy does not.

I like to know when I'm heading out what is going on at Bellenas, Grief Point, Sisters, and Sentry Shoal. In the winter I pay attention to Solander.

If you like models, and picking and choosing your own predictions, I recommend MeteoBlue.
Windy
You can see 9 different models and the variations between them visually in the multimodel display for Powell River.

I like Windy. It is an excellent visual representation of predicted weather. But it is still only a model.

Click to expand...

Windy includes multi models and lets you choose / comare as well as showing actual reported conditions (for many locations).
I used it extensively during a recent 60+ day cruise and really became a fan of Windy. The ability to pick and choose info you are interested in is a real plu in my book. We modified our Lk Ontario crossing plans both ways to catch Windy Wx "Windows" that proved to be our smoothest 2 crossing of Lk Ont ever... now a big fan.
Not familiar w/ meteoBlue?
I teach a 12 week USPS / ABC Wxx course and Richard (TF Wxxx) aboard Dauntless originally introduced me to Windy and Ive come to really like it.

Bacchus said:

Windy includes multi models and lets you choose / comare as well as showing actual reported conditions (for many locations).

Click to expand...

Windy is great. Easy to use even for a weather idiot such as myself. However, while it can show reported locations, that only works if those stations are actually reporting. Which gets back to the out of service bouys in BC.


When I have been up in BC, I really count on the current reporting in Georgia Strait. Being able to compare the current and historical data from Sentry Shoal and Halibut Bank. With Sentry Shoal down, it really hurts the ability to know what is actually happening in the strait and what conditions one might expect when crossing.

Quite a few US buoys and off shore light houses are also down for an indefinite time. Off the Maine coast Matinicus rock and Mount Desert Rock went down in early April. Matinicus came back up this afternoon, but Mount Desert Rock is still down (scheduled for sometime this month).

It can be blowing 60 knots and Nanakwa Shoal buoy in Douglas Channel will say the wave height is 0.3 metres??!!?? Been that way for years. It's supposed to be hauled in for repairs this month...we'll see...

If you go to Kelp reefs and take the items in the left column, then Saturna take the items in the right column, you have a complete report for the area.

As long as Halibut bank keeps working along with Tsawassen, Sandheads is not entirely missed. On a calm sunny day, flat water, Sandheads can have nasty water at the entrance from tide and currents.

AND Trudeau got slapped on the wrist today, happy days.

Soo-Valley said:

If you go to Kelp reefs and take the items in the left column, then Saturna take the items in the right column, you have a complete report for the area.



As long as Halibut bank keeps working along with Tsawassen, Sandheads is not entirely missed. On a calm sunny day, flat water, Sandheads can have nasty water at the entrance from tide and currents.



AND Trudeau got slapped on the wrist today, happy days.

Click to expand...

Sandheads is entirely missed! It’s critical for anyone going in or out of the river. We tie up in Steveston.

Andrew Sheer? I saw what Harper did to fisheries and...no chance I’m going thataway again.

J.

JDCAVE said:

Sandheads is entirely missed! It’s critical for anyone going in or out of the river. We tie up in Steveston.

Andrew Sheer? I saw what Harper did to fisheries and...no chance I’m going thataway again.

J.

Click to expand...

Sandheads is important, but really? you cannot adjust with Tsawassen Ferry terminal and Halibut banks and interpolate what could be happening in between where Sandheads is located.

ETA: what did Harper do to the fish stock?

The conditions at Tsawwassen are very different than Sandheads. The weather station at Sandheads predates Tsawwassen.

This biologist says H. gutted the fisheries act, didn’t act on any of the Cohen recommendations, destroyed the DFO’s habitat protection division...

Theyr Weather

Does anyone use Theyr Weather? It's global and forecasts wind, wind waves, surface temps, pressure, precip, etc. at the location your boat is at or by moving the cursor on your MFD, it will report weather conditions for that region as well. Anywhere on the planet. Cost is $100/year.

https://www.theyr.com/

JDcave
In 1980 Mt St Helens blew. I was fishing at Cabbage that day and heard what sounded like a shotgun blast. That was the last year of good fishing there. The following year Salmon returning to the Fraser came via inside passage and not Juan de puca. Fishing ended at the southern strait of georgia.
Thereafter on a one time event I crewed on a sailboat out to 300 miles offshore from Oregon where there is a mountain that tops out at 90 feet below surface. We arrived near midnight and thought we were sailing into Vancouver. There were tanker fishing vessels there cleaning up on the Salmon that thereafter could not return to BC waters.

So tell me what H did beside save $280 mil funding a bureaucracy that never reported an accurate fish count on the Fraser.

As for the Sandheads weather station, do call T and get it fixed as he has unlimited funds at his disposal.
Seriously, you cannot interpolate the weather at Sandheads from the two locations mentioned.

Soo-Valley said:

JDcave
In 2008 Mt St Helens blew. I was fishing at Cabbage that day and heard what sounded like a shotgun blast. That was the last year of good fishing there. The following year Salmon returning to the Fraser came via inside passage and not Juan de puca. Fishing ended at the southern strait of georgia.
Thereafter on a one time event I crewed on a sailboat out to 300 miles offshore from Oregon where there is a mountain that tops out at 90 feet below surface. We arrived near midnight and thought we were sailing into Vancouver. There were tanker fishing vessels there cleaning up on the Salmon that thereafter could not return to BC waters.

So tell me what H did beside save $280 mil funding a bureaucracy that never reported an accurate fish count on the Fraser.

As for the Sandheads weather station, do call T and get it fixed as he has unlimited funds at his disposal.
Seriously, you cannot interpolate the weather at Sandheads from the two locations mentioned.

Click to expand...

No idea which Pol is responsible for what. All are ineffective.
Here on Saltspring, the commercial crab fishermen are out of control and there are now no more crabs. There are no fisheries enforcers, so the tourists who take all the crabs they can find, without regard to size or sex, those who take oysters from below closure signs, without licenses, without regard to limits, are not policed, so soon there will be none, those who take this year's spring salmon in the face of a total closure, etc, are not policed.
rant out.

St Helens was 1980

koliver said:

No idea which Pol is responsible for what. All are ineffective.
Here on Saltspring, the commercial crab fishermen are out of control and there are now no more crabs. There are no fisheries enforcers, so the tourists who take all the crabs they can find, without regard to size or sex, those who take oysters from below closure signs, without licenses, without regard to limits, are not policed, so soon there will be none, those who take this year's spring salmon in the face of a total closure, etc, are not policed.
rant out.

St Helens was 1980

Click to expand...

Thanks, was in hurry typo on Helens have edited.
Over on mainland crab fisheries was cleaned out by mostly vietnam people given boats and gear in the 80's. We helped RCMP and fisheries tow in a seized boat one night with too many traps and hundreds of undersize. bottom fish were cleaned out by cartop boats filled with asians.
If you know Cabbage, there was always plenty of crabs until the marine park was opened to commercial fishing.

Currently the wind at
Halibut Banks is S 2 gust 2, wave 0.2m.
At Tsawassen it is SSE 9.
Sandheads is approx 5 from the SsW

The reply, received Fri, Aug 16:

Hello Mr. Cave,

Thank you for sending your message to Environment Climate Change Canada. The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) has recently completed a prioritizing exercise to establish this year’s maintenance activities, with an objective of maintaining services within our available operating budget. While it is expected that not all maintenance objectives will be met due to operational constraints, all efforts are being made to minimize impacts to our users. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a scheduled date for the next maintenance visit the non-operative weather stations and buoys to repair the technical issues affecting these stations and buoys. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and adjust the work schedule if necessary.

Best regards,

Bernard Duguay
Weather information specialist
MSC National Inquiry Response Team ISO 9001:2015
Environment and Climate Change Canada

Not acceptable in my opinion. Incidentally, I received a less informative response from the same fellow 2 months ago. I guess I will send a snot a gram to my MP.

Just curious how many of the EC weather stations on the east coast are down?

Here is my response to my email. Seems a bit "boiler plate" to me.

Hello Mark,

Thank you for sending your message to Environment and Climate Change Canada. The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) has recently completed a prioritizing exercise to establish this year’s maintenance activities, with an objective of maintaining services within our available operating budget. While it is expected that not all maintenance objectives will be met due to operational constraints, all efforts are being made to minimize impacts to our users. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a scheduled date for the next maintenance visit to the coastal British Columbia weather stations and buoys to repair the technical issues affecting them. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and adjust the work schedule if necessary.

Best regards,

Bernard Duguay
Weather information specialist
MSC National Inquiry Response Team ISO 9001:2015 Environment and Climate Change Canada

I fired off an email to our MP and MLA (who I know is a boater). No response as of yet.

This would NOT be an issue if it was in Eastern Canada.

Good man Tolly! You deserve and “Atta boy” for that one! The reply is almost exactly the same as mine, except “Bernard” corrected a grammatical mistake that was present on mine.

Jim

I am heartened to see that other boaters have raised this issue with Environment Canada. I had contacted them as well, after finding the Fanny Island reporting station had not been reporting for many months. Fanny Island is crucial to navigating Johnstone Strait.



After receiving basically the same reply from Environment Canada as others on this forum I contacted our MP and received a copy of a letter she has sent to "Ottawa". The following part from her letter outlines what she has been told so far.


"I and my staff have spoken with workers in all related departments, all of whom expressed that they would like to see the issue resolved as well. I have been told it is a lack of resources on all sides causing the issue. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) does not operate any vessels of its own with the capacity to fix the stations, and will usually instead go out on a Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) vessel to do the work. CCG has been too busy to conduct any of these repairs lately, and as a result the stations remain down. Marine Communications and Traffic Services Canada is also negatively affected by this lack of information."


The fact that the department responsible for maintenance doesn't have a boat is ridiculous. I suggested that perhaps they could hire one of any number of qualified boat operators with a boat to take them to the various stations but then of course that would require much more red tape I'm sure.


The only answer I can see is continuing to be a "squeaky wheel" and maybe someone somewhere with authority will see the importance of the live station reporting. Don't even get me started on the lightstations that only report between 7:40am and 4:40 pm!


For all of our safety let's keep up the pressure.

Interesting. Getting the same crap in SE Alaska in regards to Fanshaw weather radio being out all Summer. NOAA told us it was up to the Coast Guard and they told us that they have other priorities as well. All these other weather services are good and fine for those who can afford satellite connections-cellular connections are non-existent any many areas, but for those of us who rely on VHF it sucks.

Tator

Thanks for your work on this issue NComfort. Your explanation for the delays makes sense. Of course we are heading into an election so none of our letters will resonate. In my travels, I have seen the coast guard provisioning vessel, normally in the central coast area and most recently in 2017. They were active putting in new navigational aids around the approaches to the “Northern Gateway”. There are numerous lights now in Caamano Sound and Whale, Squally and Douglas Channels. I suspect EC requires access to a vessel like this to service some of their equipment. However, at the very least, they could service Saturna, at it’s a ferry ride. Surely that is doable. And several other aids could be handled with local barge operators: Sandheads out of Steveston, Sentry out of Campbell River and Fanny out of Kelsey Bay.

Pam and I looked at the weather stations on the east coast and they are all on land and only a couple were down. It seems they have adequate resources on the east coast!

Jim

JDCAVE said:

Thanks for your work on this issue NComfort. Your explanation for the delays makes sense. Of course we are heading into an election so none of our letters will resonate. In my travels, I have seen the coast guard provisioning vessel, normally in the central coast area and most recently in 2017. They were active putting in new navigational aids around the approaches to the “Northern Gateway”. There are numerous lights now in Caamano Sound and Whale, Squally and Douglas Channels. I suspect EC requires access to a vessel like this to service some of their equipment. However, at the very least, they could service Saturna, at it’s a ferry ride. Surely that is doable. And several other aids could be handled with local barge operators: Sandheads out of Steveston, Sentry out of Campbell River and Fanny out of Kelsey Bay.

Pam and I looked at the weather stations on the east coast and they are all on land and only a couple were down. It seems they have adequate resources on the east coast!

Jim

Click to expand...

For several years the Gulf Tide, a 50' Tug conversion, was employed in the central Coast, maintaining Nav Aids in the summers, resting in Ganges in the winter. That seems to have lapsed, without any replacement.

My recent delivery trip up the Central Coast saw quite a few new navaids on the routes likely to be used by "Northern Gateway" ships. So new the charts on board our modern sailboat didn't show them.

koliver said:

For several years the Gulf Tide, a 50' Tug conversion, was employed in the central Coast, maintaining Nav Aids in the summers, resting in Ganges in the winter. That seems to have lapsed, without any replacement.



My recent delivery trip up the Central Coast saw quite a few new navaids on the routes likely to be used by "Northern Gateway" ships. So new the charts on board our modern sailboat didn't show them.

Click to expand...

...when we’re in the CC, the WX station was full with updates on new aids to navigation. The area is now lit up like a Christmas tree!

Election year. Liberals. West Coast.

That’s it.

The morons in Ottawa couldn’t run a hot dog stand let alone run a country. Our area is on “Stage 3” water rationing and there was just an announcement that the Federal Government is funding the renovation of a recreation hall here, complete with a dog-and-pony with a federal minister. Whoopie-ding.

I have to stop now or my language will deteriorate...