Reading grid weather risk: live wind and official alerts over Canada's power system
Weather drives most large power outages. GooseAtlas overlays live wind, a 48-hour forecast and official Environment and Climate Change Canada alerts on the grid so you can see what is exposed and when.
Weather is the single largest cause of major power interruptions. Wind brings down conductors and trees, ice loads lines and towers, and storms take out substations. Seeing weather next to the assets it threatens turns a forecast into something you can act on.
GooseAtlas puts live conditions, a short-range forecast and official alerts on the same map as Canada's generation and transmission. This guide explains what the weather layers show and how to read them for grid risk.
GooseAtlas is an open, experimental atlas of Canada's grid. If your team wants deeper data, an embed, or a sponsorship, tell us what you need.
Become a supporter or sponsorThe weather layers
- Live wind as an animated field, so you can see where it is strongest right now.
- A 48-hour forecast you can scrub hour by hour to see how conditions build and where the peak gust lands.
- Official watches and warnings from Environment and Climate Change Canada, drawn as the polygons they actually cover.
- Weather overlays such as temperature, wind speed, precipitation and radar from the national weather service.
Because the alert polygons are the real shapes issued by the weather service, you can see exactly which parts of the grid fall inside a given warning rather than guessing from a province-wide label.
From forecast to grid impact
A wind speed on its own is just a number. What matters for the grid is which assets sit in the high-wind or alert area. GooseAtlas samples the wind field and checks which generating stations, substations and critical facilities fall inside active alert polygons, then summarises the exposure: how much generating capacity, how many substations, and which provinces are affected.
We can tailor the impact view and data to your operating area. Let's talk.
Become a supporter or sponsorHow to use the weather view
- Turn on live weather from the panel. The wind field animates over the map.
- Scrub the forecast timeline to step through the next 48 hours and find the peak gust.
- Turn on watches and warnings to see the official alert polygons over the grid.
- Read the impact summary to see capacity, substations and provinces exposed in the current or scrubbed hour.
Where the weather data comes from
Alerts and overlays come from Environment and Climate Change Canada and its open data services. The wind and forecast fields come from Open-Meteo. GooseAtlas never invents a number: if a feed is unavailable, it says so rather than showing a false all-clear.
Grid risk is about timing and location as much as magnitude. Putting live weather on the same map as the assets it threatens is a simple idea that changes how quickly a team can see what matters.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Watches and warnings come directly from Environment and Climate Change Canada and are drawn as the polygons they issue.
The scrubbable forecast covers the next 48 hours, sampled hourly across a grid over the country.