Aging weather stations pose "critical risk"

In the fall of 2000, the Atikokan, Ontario, weather station, 150 km west of Thunder Bay, broke down completely. Suddenly, the Meteorological Service of Canada could not give an accurate weather forecast for the largest city in northwestern Ontario. The service had enough money to replace the weather station, but there are about 60 more decrepit stations across Canada that could fail at any moment, leaving residents at the mercy of dangerous and unforecasted storms.

Nancy Cutler, the service's director-general of policy and corporate affairs, said, "Yes, we can see (the storms) coming from the U.S. But in terms of getting the timing right, in terms of determining just where that …