HN

Comments (49)

• Marsymars
  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.
• teuobk
  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 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
• Menu

  stego-tech
  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.
• Menu

  TutleCpt
  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.
• arian_
  Replacing a system that works with no internet, no power grid, and no account with "just use your phone" is not an upgrade.
• tokyobreakfast
  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.
• amatecha
  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.
• Aloha
  This seems insane, particularly given the short notice period for the shutdown.
• Menu

  oldnetguy
  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.
• Menu

  robmusial
  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.
• jdalgetty
  One less thing to listen to on my radio scanner :(
• ipcress_file
  So I'm guessing that this is what those stylish wood grain Weatheradio cubes in the Radio Shack catalog were for?
• Menu

  bhouston
  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.
• jmclnx
  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.
• Menu

  willis936
  Why was this done?
• Menu

  kotaKat
  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.
• opengrass
  Only boaters use this.