It may hardly feel like summer storm season, but that's not stopping Steinbach's Emergency Coordinator from getting his Storm Ready team established for 2015.

Denis Vassart explains this year's Storm Spotter program will run from April 29 to September 30. But before it begins, Vassart says he has six vacancies he would like filled.

Spotters must live within a ten kilometre radius of Steinbach. Each team of four is on call for one week per month. When needed, they are notified by weather radio, text, telephone or cell phone and asked to watch the sky for signs of severe weather developing. The spotters will then contact the Emergency Operations Team and Environment Canada if severe weather is imminent.

Vassart (right inset) notes the reason he is recruiting so far in advance is because volunteers will take part in training, both in-house and by Environment Canada. The training sessions will take place in March and April covering topics such as forecasting terminology, severe weather forecasting and radar as well as cloud and storm identification. Each member is also provided a Weather Watcher's Handbook, used by the spotter as a reference in the field.

Vassart says a full team consists of about twenty-four people. This group is then broken down into teams of four. Vassart notes while on call, they will be asked to be available to check radar and watch for storms. This year's vacancy rate is not that unusual, as Vassart says team members will often drop out because of other commitments or because they move out of the area.

According to Vassart, Steinbach's Storm Ready program is unique to Manitoba and possibly the only one of its kind in Canada. Created in 2009, Vassart says last year they accumulated about 120 hours of volunteer work.

"It's a good program for our emergency preparedness and we still have people that are interested and keen on doing it," he says. "So we'll run it as long as we can."