Canada: Weather and warning system to get upgrade

The Canadian federal government announced that it will spend $78.7 million to upgrade the country's national weather monitoring and warning systems – reported Canada.com. The funding will partly go toward the maintenance and replacement of radar sites across the country, and partly to finance weather and climate observation, a national lightning detection system and Canada's Aerological Network.

Environment Minister Peter Kent said that "the improvements will allow Environment Canada to better notify Canadians about severe weather events, which lead to deaths, injuries and millions of dollars of property and infrastructure damage in the country each year." The agency issues an average of 1.5 million weather forecasts, including 15,000 severe weather warnings every year.