Environment Canada has introduced new colour tiers to their weather advisories. The new system is split up into yellow, orange, and red weather warnings depending on the severity of the impact the weather will have.

Jim Prime, a Meteorologist with Environment Canada explains the meaning behind each of the coloured tiers.

“We’re still keeping watches in our special weather statements, but now what we’re adding is we’re adding colour tiers to these advisories and bulletins. So, what that means is that if we have a yellow warning, it will mean we’re expecting moderate impact, an orange warning is associated with high impact and a red warning is when we have extreme impact.”

Prime says that the switch to the colour tiers was influenced by other countries in the World Meteorological Association finding success using the same system.

“This actually follows along with the World Meteorological Association, their guidelines. Other countries have switched over to this more impact based and tiered warning and they’ve had very good success with it, so their guidelines are saying this is a positive approach to take and so this is our take on this to be able to have an improved system and better preparedness for people to get our warnings and understand what it means for them.”

Prime says that it is important for people to read Environment Canada’s weather alert bulletins in full as they contain details that could help a person in an extreme weather situation.

“You might get a yellow warning with extreme impact. It would all be listed there as well as what we’re expecting and then some messages for how to prepare for it. The idea behind all of this is just to get people more prepared because we have found that if you do send out the warnings early, people are able to prepare for it and get ready. Most of the time that helps lower the impact.”

Yellow warnings will be the most common, with red reserved for extreme weather events that will be talked about years into the future.