Environment Canada for Home Assistant

Meteorological data for Canadian locations from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

This custom component provides the same functionality as the built-in environment_canada integration, plus features from pending pull requests that have not yet been merged into Home Assistant core.

Features beyond the built-in integration:

• Precip Type radar layer — shows precipitation type classification in addition to rain and snow layers (from core PR #161602)
• Richer alert data — a single alerts sensor replaces the five separate category sensors; each alert exposes title, colour, area, text, status, confidence, impact, and more (from core PR #164481)
• Configurable radar camera — radar type, legend, timestamp, opacity, and map radius are all adjustable from the integration's Configure dialog

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Installation

Via HACS (recommended)

1. Click the button above, or open HACS in your Home Assistant instance, go to Integrations, click ⋮ → Custom repositories, and add michaeldavie/environment_canada_hacs as an Integration.
2. Search for Environment Canada and install it.
3. Restart Home Assistant.

Manual

1. Copy the custom_components/environment_canada directory into your <config>/custom_components/ directory.
2. Restart Home Assistant.

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Configuration

After installation, add the integration via Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration → Environment Canada.

Location selection

Choose your weather location using either:

• Station selector — select a station from a dropdown of all Environment Canada weather stations.
• Coordinates — provide latitude and longitude to automatically use the nearest station (defaults to your Home Assistant location).

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Migrating from the built-in integration

This custom component uses the same domain (environment_canada) and will replace the built-in integration. Before installing:

1. Go to Settings → Devices & Services and remove the existing Environment Canada integration.
2. Install this custom component and restart Home Assistant.
3. Re-add the integration via Add Integration.

Note: Your entity IDs will be the same after re-adding, so most automations and dashboards will continue working. The one exception is the alert sensors — see below.

Alert sensor migration

The five separate alert category sensors have been replaced by a single combined sensor.<name>_alerts entity. If you have automations or dashboard cards that reference the old entity IDs, update them as follows:

Old entity	Replacement
sensor.<name>_advisories	sensor.<name>_alerts filtered by type == 'advisory'
sensor.<name>_warnings	sensor.<name>_alerts filtered by type == 'warning'
sensor.<name>_watches	sensor.<name>_alerts filtered by type == 'watch'
sensor.<name>_statements	sensor.<name>_alerts filtered by type == 'statement'
sensor.<name>_endings	sensor.<name>_alerts filtered by type == 'ending'

To replicate an old per-category count (e.g. warnings), use a template:

{{ state_attr('sensor.NAME_alerts', 'alerts')
   | selectattr('type', 'eq', 'warning')
   | list | count }}

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Entities

Weather

Current conditions, daily forecast, and hourly forecast.

Radar map (camera)

A loop of radar imagery from the last 3 hours. This entity is disabled by default — enable it from the entity's settings dialog.

The camera is configurable via Settings → Devices & Services → Environment Canada → Configure:

Option	Default	Description
Radar type	Precipitation type	Rain, Snow, or Precipitation type
Show legend	On	Toggle the colour legend overlay
Show timestamp	On	Toggle the timestamp overlay
Radar opacity	65	Opacity of the radar layer (0–100)
Map radius	200 km	Radius of the radar map

Changes take effect immediately after saving (the integration reloads automatically).

The radar type can also be changed at runtime without a reload using the environment_canada.set_radar_type action (see Actions below).

Sensors

Conditions and forecasts

• Current condition
• Forecast summary
• Icon code
• Barometric pressure
• Pressure tendency
• Humidity
• Visibility
• UV index
• Air quality health index (AQHI)

Temperature

• Temperature
• Forecast high temperature
• Forecast low temperature
• Dewpoint
• Wind chill (only below 0 °C)
• Humidex (only above 19 °C)

Wind

• Wind speed
• Wind gust
• Wind direction
• Wind bearing

Precipitation

• Probability of precipitation

Alerts

• Alerts — total count of active alerts across all categories. The alerts attribute contains a list of all active alerts. Each alert may include:

  Field	Description
  title	Alert name
  issued	Publication datetime
  color	Risk colour level (e.g. yellow, red)
  expiry	Expiration datetime
  url	Link to the full alert text
  text	Full alert text (WFS source only)
  area	Geographic area name (WFS source only)
  status	Alert status, e.g. active (WFS source only)
  confidence	Confidence level (WFS source only)
  impact	Impact description (WFS source only)
  alert_code	Alert code (WFS source only)
  type	Alert type: advisory, warning, watch, statement, or ending

  WFS-only fields are omitted when the integration falls back to XML parsing.

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Solving problems

Service interruptions

Although infrequent, there have been some outages of the Environment Canada service. If you see errors similar to the one below, check the Environment Canada mailing list for known issues before opening a report.

2022-10-05 12:25:08 ERROR Timeout fetching environment_canada weather data

Sensor unavailable or unknown

Not all stations provide a complete set of data. Browse the raw XML for your station to see what data is available.

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Template sensors

Replace NAME with the name of your weather or sensor entity.

Feels like

template:
  - sensor:
      - name: "Feels Like"
        device_class: temperature
        unit_of_measurement: "°C"
        state: >
          {% if not is_state('sensor.NAME_humidex', 'unknown') %}
            {{ states('sensor.NAME_humidex') }}
          {% elif not is_state('sensor.NAME_wind_chill', 'unknown') %}
            {{ states('sensor.NAME_wind_chill') }}
          {% else %}
            {{ states('sensor.NAME_temperature') | round(0) }}
          {% endif %}

Additional forecast data

template:
  - trigger:
      - platform: time_pattern
        hours: "/4"
      - platform: homeassistant
        event: start
      - platform: event
        event_type: event_template_reloaded
    actions:
      - action: environment_canada.get_forecasts
        target:
          entity_id: weather.NAME
        response_variable: forecasts
    sensor:
      - name: Weather Forecast Daily
        unique_id: weather_forecast_daily
        state: "{{ states('weather.NAME') }}"
        attributes:
          daily: "{{ forecasts['weather.NAME']['daily_forecast'] }}"
          hourly: "{{ forecasts['weather.NAME']['hourly_forecast'] }}"
          summary: "{{ forecasts['weather.NAME']['daily_forecast'][0]['text_summary'] }}"
          temperature_unit: "{{ state_attr('weather.NAME', 'temperature_unit') }}"

Alert count by category

{{ state_attr('sensor.NAME_alerts', 'alerts')
   | selectattr('type', 'eq', 'warning')
   | list | count }}

Active alert titles

{{ state_attr('sensor.NAME_alerts', 'alerts')
   | map(attribute='title')
   | list | join(', ') }}

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Actions

environment_canada.get_forecasts

Returns the raw Environment Canada forecast data (both daily_forecast and hourly_forecast).

Parameter	Description
entity_id	The weather entity to get the forecast for

environment_canada.set_radar_type

Sets the radar layer for the camera entity.

Parameter	Description
entity_id	The camera entity to update
radar_type	One of Auto, Rain, Snow, or Precip Type

Auto selects Rain from April through October and Snow from November through March.