Weather forecasts at your fingertips

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) approached us with an idea: give Canadians access to weather information on their mobile devices. We helped them find the best infrastructure solution to support a new mobile weather app.

ECCC’s WeatherCAN application is now available for download. It will help Canadians make informed decisions relating to their safety and has the processing power of our supercomputers behind it.

The idea

What better way to place weather information directly into the hands of Canadians than with a mobile app. With the popularity of ECCC’s weather website — weather.gc.ca gets over 500 million visits per year — it made sense to go that route.

ECCC developed the application to disseminate weather alerts and display existing weather data, and new forms of data, from systems that we manage.

The technology

What makes WeatherCAN different than the other weather apps out there?

• It uses the official weather forecasts emitted by ECCC, produced on SSC supercomputers.
• It displays high-resolution radar imagery processed and distributed via SSC-managed systems.
• It uses specialized web mapping software to present information in a user-friendly format.
• It refreshes all weather information automatically when you wake up your device or open the app.

The collaboration

The WeatherCAN app highlights our work to provide departments with what they need to deliver services that are high quality, accessible, secure and digitally-enabled for Canadians.

We collaborated with several different teams within ECCC to make sure that all systems involved interact seamlessly to access all of the required weather data, download it quickly and keep up during peak periods.

The reveal

You can download the app by searching for WeatherCAN in the App Store or Google Play stores.

Next time you check the forecast, you can plan your day knowing that you can rely on accurate weather information.