Fire Weather Watch!

[anon(5445874)]

Cortana just made my phone beep with a warning about a fire weather watch. Not sure what to do now, I guess stay away from matches! On a serious note, is there a way to tell it/her to not warn me of weather? I had disabled it in the bing weather because everyday in las vegas it would give me a warning of excessive heat, which is obvious to anyone who lives here, we don't need reminding.

 

[vitor.rf]

Cortana just made my phone beep with a warning about a fire weather watch. Not sure what to do now, I guess stay away from matches! On a serious note, is there a way to tell it/her to not warn me of weather? I had disabled it in the bing weather because everyday in las vegas it would give me a warning of excessive heat, which is obvious to anyone who lives here, we don't need reminding.

Cortana > notebook > interests > weather > notify me about weather incidents

it's on by default

 

[anon(5445874)]

sweet, guess I need to spend more time diving into cortana's settings. This must be a new thing they are pushing, bing.com on my pc is also telling me about this 'fire weather watch'. It seems kind of ridiculous.

 

[DavidinCT]

I have gotten a few Flood warnings from Cortana in the last week or so. When the reports are showing heavy rain, but, I have not seen too much flooding here in CT...

 

[ArthurKnight]

Is anyone else suddenly getting spammed by these? Starting last night, it feels like I'm getting them every 10-20 minutes:
10:27 - High Wind Warning Continued
10:37 - Fire Weather Watch Upgraded
10:57 - High Wind Warning Continued

Cortana, alert me once then don't warn me when something is "continued".

 

[anon(5445874)]

After the 2nd fire weather watch in an hour, I disabled the notifications.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Cortana > notebook > interests > weather > notify me about weather incidents

it's on by default

Thanks! I just disabled the alerts.

 

[anon(5445874)]

I really wish there was a way to keep alerts on but only for things that really matter. For example, a warning for extreme heat in vegas is stupid, because they (like bing weather) give those alerts everyday from June till September. The alert means nothing because it's just part of living here. But there are occasionally flash floods here, and I would like to be alerted about those.

 

[vitor.rf]

I really wish there was a way to keep alerts on but only for things that really matter. For example, a warning for extreme heat in vegas is stupid, because they (like bing weather) give those alerts everyday from June till September. The alert means nothing because it's just part of living here. But there are occasionally flash floods here, and I would like to be alerted about those.

I agree. Try contacting Bing/Microsoft. Las Vegas is surely hotter than other areas even in normal days, but it can also be hotter than Las Vegas' normal. It's just a matter of adjusting locations and weather in time. LOTS of weather sites keep track AND compares today's weather with this date on past years.

 

[anon(5445874)]

Well, back when I allowed bing weather to give me alerts, it was giving me heat warnings everyday, even if it wasn't a record setting day. I use to live elsewhere too and would get wind warnings (even if the wind wasn't that strong) or other bogus things.

 

[Guzzler3]

Hmmm, I just thought Cortana was just really paranoid about fire.

I'm in Phoenix, and these 'pings' are really getting annoying when I was out and about. I just got home and checked the National Weather Service, and yep. They've issued 2, count them, TWO warnings today. But Cortana just keeps 'pinging' away about every 20-30 minutes. (aaa crap, another one just now).

Now I do like to know about these warnings. Especially during the Monsoon, when we get some incredible downpours. So I would like to continue getting these alerts, just not constantly. And it would be nice to be able when I tap on the alert in the action center, it brings up the details of the alert, not just to her simple 5 day outlook.

Actually I just realized that the new Bing Weather app isn't showing the alerts like it used to. From there I could tap and get the detailed info.

 

[Ram Gowrishankar]

Thanks for the feedback. I do work for Microsoft on this area. In regards to the spam that happened in May, in our Beta we had an issue where the alerts started cycling to users. This has been fixed for all users. Apologies if you felt spammed due to our issue in May.

In regards to getting the right alerts to the users, this has been our biggest challenge. For a las vegas resident issuing an excessive heat alert (this is issued by NOAA not Microsoft BTW), maybe irrelevant, but someone from seattle landing in Las Vegas would want to know so he/she wouldn't have a heat stroke.

That said, I get the feedback. We are trying to figure out what is "my normal" to each user that way we can be smart about delivering these alerts. We will work towards this to make it better over time.

 

[Guzzler3]

Just wanted to say thanks. I turned back on the notifications and what-ever you did worked. Notifications are back to being reasonable, for now

 

[Ram Gowrishankar]

Thanks Guzzler. We are working on more fixes to make this less noisy. We have NOAA send us extensions and continuations which for a normal user can be a bit noisy. Alerts as notifications is tricky for us. No matter how we do it we will have a few folks that may find it too little or too much . I appreciate keeping us honest.
Ram

 

[Ram Gowrishankar]

as an update, we made more fixes that should reduce perceived noise (NOAA sends us many extensions and continuations for an alert that makes us buzz you a lot). So you should get much lower noise but with valid updates. Please turn back your alerts (goto notebook, interests, weather interest page and click on alerts check box) and let us know your experience please?

We will continue to strive and make Cortana your favorite digital assistant!.
Ram

 

[jleebiker]

Quite honestly, I don't know how you would turn down the noise. The only way I can think of is to start classifying the type of weather alerts there are out there. Sever Weather, Tornado, High Heat, etc and then let the user choose what is relevant to them. Do you want to do this though? Then you start having to classifying them and then that's more data that needs to be passed back and forth. It could get messy really quickly.

 

[Ram Gowrishankar]

You are correct. There are noises at different level. 1. The types of alerts that would be perceived by users as alerts and 2. The alerts surfacing as it is, NOAA does issue extensions and continuations which can all pop up toasts. no 2 is the most noise. Ex : fire weather alert in el paso texas can get upto 5 updates from NOAA for a single alert within 2 days. That's not all needed to be sent as a toast.

At this time we are most focused on ensuring an alert surfaces user correctly and the toast is kept to only important updates to the alert. There are ways to get more creative and more advanced using the action center to determine the types of alerts but that would be a future release feature.

 

[anon(5445874)]

Thanks for the feedback. I do work for Microsoft on this area. In regards to the spam that happened in May, in our Beta we had an issue where the alerts started cycling to users. This has been fixed for all users. Apologies if you felt spammed due to our issue in May.

In regards to getting the right alerts to the users, this has been our biggest challenge. For a las vegas resident issuing an excessive heat alert (this is issued by NOAA not Microsoft BTW), maybe irrelevant, but someone from seattle landing in Las Vegas would want to know so he/she wouldn't have a heat stroke.

That said, I get the feedback. We are trying to figure out what is "my normal" to each user that way we can be smart about delivering these alerts. We will work towards this to make it better over time.

Thanks for the reply! I'm sure the team is already on the case, but i'll bet those notifications could somehow be linked to where you spend most of your time. That way if you live in a hot climate, you don't need to be bothered. But if you're just visiting the same area you will get the notification. Just a thought.

I was kind of shocked a few days ago when my phone started making the beeping noise like you'd hear on the radio or tv for a flash flood warning. It kind of made the rain more fun knowing about my impending doom

 

[Ram Gowrishankar]

Yes we are discussing this. After this week's internal release, you should only get ONE per alert issued going forward for Toast. That would first step reduce your alerts greatly!. In regards to customization, it is very difficult to ignore certain and provide certain based on the location. We could possibly set up a selection criteria but that's going to takea little time. I really appreciate your feedback and please keep them coming.