Severe Thunderstorm, image via Wikimedia Commons. CC License
OTTAWA — Environment and Climate Change Canada is rolling out a new colour coded alert system today that will assign yellow, orange or red labels to every weather watch, advisory and warning issued across the country.
The change is meant to make it easier for Canadians to understand the level of risk posed by approaching storms or hazardous conditions. Yellow alerts will be the most common, signalling weather that may cause localized damage, disruption or health impacts. Orange alerts indicate the potential for widespread or long lasting severe weather and more significant impacts. Red alerts will be rare and reserved for very dangerous, potentially life threatening events expected to bring extreme damage and prolonged disruption.
ECCC says forecasters will choose the alert colour based on both their confidence in the forecast and the scale of expected impacts, such as property damage, power outages, travel issues or health risks. High confidence in a high impact event would prompt an orange alert, while red is only used when meteorologists are certain a storm will be severe and dangerous.
The agency released examples of how the system would have applied in past storms. A chinook wind event that caused scattered tree damage in southern Alberta would likely have triggered a yellow wind warning. The widespread freezing rain storm that coated parts of southern Ontario in March 2025 would have received an orange ice warning. The catastrophic atmospheric river that flooded southern British Columbia in 2021 would have been labelled a red rain warning.
The new system takes effect immediately and will appear on all federal weather alerts starting today.
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