The Northern Mesonet Project: Creation of an interconnected network of surface weather station networks in Canada

Surface weather stations are a critical technology for understanding severe convective storms due to their unique capabilities. While weather radar effectively detects precipitation and wind patterns aloft, its limitation is its inability to capture crucial surface-level weather where it matters the most for people and property. Documenting and analyzing such events offer invaluable insights into their causes, impacts, and potential future occurrences.Existing surface weather stations in Canada frequently face several known limitations that impede their effectiveness, especially when it comes to severe convective storms. In general, Canadian surface weather stations are widely spaced which often fail to capture highly localized severe convective storms. Additionally, the operation of these stations is managed by different federal and provincial agencies, which makes it difficult to utilize existing surface weather stations for nowcasting severe convective storms. Furthermore, it poses challenges in collecting data after an event, as the ease of access to this data can vary greatly across these different agencies.This is the reason for the creation of Northern Mesonet Project (NMP), a new program under the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory, which aims to better monitor severe convective storms by increasing the spatial density of real-time advanced weather observations and enhancing data availability & quality for severe weather analysis and prediction. This presentation will specifically highlight the Canadian Mesonet Portal, a central repository and access point established by NMP to address some of the limitations faced by Canadian surface weather stations. By connecting over 30 individual surface weather station networks, the Canadian Mesonet Portal provides a unified platform for accessing over 2800 publicly available surface weather observations across Canada. This unified platform allows for better nowcasting of severe convective storms in Canada, and for better analysis of the damage caused by severe convective storms.