EDMONTON — A cross-Canada radio service that for decades has delivered the latest local forecasts as well as critical alerts about severe weather 24 hours a day is signing off, with listeners being advised to switch to online or cellphone-based services.

Environment and Climate Change Canada says on its website that effective Monday, Weatheradio will be permanently disconnected. The announcement says anyone who wants local weather forecasts and alerts should consult the agency’s interactive weather map or download its WeatherCAN app.

In an email, the agency said the radio service, which began operating in the 1970s and broadcasts within the VHF public service band available on certain radios, has become increasingly challenging to maintain because of climbing costs.

The dial-in Good Morning service, where users can phone for a recorded local forecast, will end the same day. Marine forecasts will remain available via the Canadian Coast Guard radio system.

“To be honest, I think it’s not going to affect myself or our operation that much because we rely on the internet service from Starlink,” said Rob Argue, the Ottawa-based owner of Eastern Canadian Outfitters, which has two hunting and fishing lodges in Quebec.

But the decision is ringing alarm bells for Radio Amateurs of Canada, whose volunteers help with communications support during disasters. It said in a statement that Weatheradio has been particularly important in rural, remote and northern communities where cellular and internet coverage can be limited or unreliable.

“Everybody remembers in Canada that Rogers went down for a day and everybody panicked,” the organization’s president, Allan Boyd, said in an interview, referring to a network outage in 2022.

“Cellular and satellite communications are very reliable today, but the infrastructure could fail. And if that goes down, then there’s not much to rely on, for sure.”

Retired school teacher and farmer Jack Furrie, who was 77, died after a twister tore through the Rural Municipality of Alonsa in Manitoba in 2018. His grandson told The Canadian Press at the time that Furrie hadn’t been able to get any cell service after upgrades were made to the local network, and he missed alerts that were sent out before the storm moved through.

Weatheradio allows the transmission of a tone and coding for specific areas that activate an alarm on the receiving radio, alerting of an incoming important message.

Transmitters — 230 of them — stretch into Canada’s Arctic and from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, and Environment Canada’s website says more than 90 per cent of Canadians have been able to access a Weatheradio signal.