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West Lethbridge Weather has grown from an interest in technology, weather and plain old adventure into what you see here today. In my searches for weather info, I found bits and pieces of details all over! I've amassed a Huge volume of weather info here into one site - so I can find it myself. I've chosen to share all the info I have found with anyone interested in weather information. There's as little or as much as you can handle. All I can say - have a good look around as there is a wealth of information and education right here at our site.

By Sean Myers, Calgary Herald October 28, 2010
A team of volunteer weather watchers armed with ham radios is helping Environment Canada forecast and report on the most severe conditions in southern Alberta.

"Some of the best pieces of weather information are human observations that identify or confirm certain weather phenomena as opposed to having to interpret what radar is trying to tell us or trying to interpret what an automatic station or satellite is telling us," said Bill McMurtry, a meteorologist based in Calgary.

"Two eyes on the ground can provide a lot of information to Environment Canada."

Earlier this month, the agency trained a group of licensed ham radio operators.

Based in Lethbridge, the new branch of the Canadian Weather Amateur Radio Network -- known as CANWARN -- is operational.

"I've been a weather weenie for a long time," said organizer Gary Wheeler, 54. "I built myself a weather website because it used to frustrate me that I could only get a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it was scattered all over. You could never find it all."

Wheeler, who owns a computer repair shop, started www.westlethbridgeweather.com to compile weather information.CANWARN networks started up in Ontario in the early 1990s and expanded to Manitoba and central Alberta. The system is based on SKY-WARN, a long established network of weather spotters in the United States.

As a ham radio operator, Wheeler was already tied into a network of people capable of providing accurate weather information. He just had to reach them. He was hoping to get 20 but ended up with nearly twice that number.

The group met in Lethbridge on Oct. 7 to get their training. They learned the detailed information that Environment Canada requires during severe weather episodes and how to report on it safely.

"A lot of it has to do with summer severe weather," said McMurtry. "It's things that perhaps automatic weather stations don't measure or satellites or radar don't always get the exact answer to. So things like tornadoes, hail, large thunderstorms -- those type of events. It also helps supplement our information when we get big snows, measures of significant snowfall accumulation can be reported as well."

Once their marching orders were received, the radio operators from Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and rural areas south of Calgary were given a hotline to meteorologists to relay the latest weather reports from the field.

This is a clip from Global TV here in Lethbridge - an interview about the station with Mark Campbell on his February 12, 2009 Scene & Heard segment

Here's a clip from Global TV here in Lethbridge - our station was featured on the news March 1, 2009

Lethbridge Herald did an article on the station March 1, 2009