CUT KNIFE — There’s a long-running joke in Saskatchewan that if you wait five minutes, the weather will change — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For one Cut Knife student, wild weather is what he lives for.
Aaron Rutley, a Grade 12 student at Cut Knife Community School, has created a one-of-a-kind, fully mobile severe weather alert system. Rutley was inspired to create the system after a tornado swept through his family’s farm in 2020. The system mimics federal sirens commonly found in the United States.
As a young child, Rutley said he was terrified of tornadoes and thunderstorms. His parents helped him navigate his fears by encouraging him to learn more about severe weather systems.
“I started learning more about storms and severe weather, and over the course of 10 years, my fear grew into an intense interest in storms. When the tornado hit our yard, we didn’t get any warnings, so I started researching ways to help issue warnings and discovered storm chasing. Four years later, I started chasing storms once I got my license,” said the teen.
He purchased a police-grade siren with a loudspeaker from Amazon, which he mounted to his truck. When there is a risk of severe weather, Rutley can activate the siren and use the loudspeaker to advise others to seek shelter.
“We have different kinds of criteria for what is considered severe weather, such as hail that is baseball size or larger or wind gusts in excess of 130 km per hour. We will drive ahead of the most dangerous situation, issuing warnings along the path until it either dies or a stronger storm ends up taking over or gets worse,” said Rutley.
The student is not working on the design alone, noting he has received advice from the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency through the Youth Preparedness Council. Rutley, along with six other students on the council, has learned different aspects of emergency preparedness, including how emergencies are handled in Saskatchewan compared with other parts of the world. Council members are provided with resources, attend conferences and have the opportunity to design their own projects under SPSA mentorship. Although there is no funding available to Rutley through the council, he is hopeful of securing funding to expand the project in the future.
Rutley said his siren is not designed to replace Environment Canada alerts, but rather to act as a backup system, giving residents time to find a safe place to shelter. He hopes the siren can sound 10 to 15 minutes before a severe storm hits, though that window could shrink to five minutes depending on storm speed.
Rutley plans to test the siren in Cut Knife with help from his classmates.
“People are going to stand in random areas of town while I drive around town. This test will see how far the sound of the siren carries, how it’s going to work and if it will be loud enough. Once we make the adjustments, testing of the siren might only have to happen once a year,” he said.
Currently, there is only one mobile unit in the Cut Knife area and, as far as Rutley is aware, nothing similar exists in the province. If the project proves effective, he hopes to see more vehicles equipped to expand coverage across Saskatchewan.
Rutley plans to attend the University of Manitoba to study physical geography, focusing on how weather impacts the environment and weather patterns. He also plans to continue storm chasing and developing his project while farming and ranching on the family farm.
