NWS alert

[Jtress]

I was awoken at about 4:30 AM this morning by that annoying emergency alert system noise coming from my windows phone! That is a first for me. My wife's android remained silent...
It appeared to be a message through the weather channel app, as it was open in the background from this message I got. I also got a text message from the National weather service, which came a few minutes earlier, but did not hear the text come through. But man, that squak of the EAS sure got my attention!!

We had a tornado spotted to the SW of our house about 7 miles out and it was heading northeast. So we were right in the possible path. (it missed us by about 2 miles).

Funny thing is, I have the severe weather alerts off on the weather channel app. I live in the Tampa Bay area, which is the lightning capital of the world. Those alerts go off to the point of annoying, so I disable them. So I am not really sure why this went off, but glad it did :smile:

 

[tk-093]

Those alerts come from the phone settings, not the app setting.

Go to Settings, the swipe over to applications, then select messaging...

Scroll down to the bottom and you should see 'Emergency Alerts'

By default 'all alerts' is on which would include like tornado warnings, etc. It's actually pretty cool how on modern smartphones they can target an area and those cell towers will alert all phones connected to them.

 

[Jtress]

Those alerts come from the phone settings, not the app setting.

Go to Settings, the swipe over to applications, then select messaging...

Scroll down to the bottom and you should see 'Emergency Alerts'

By default 'all alerts' is on which would include like tornado warnings, etc. It's actually pretty cool how on modern smartphones they can target an area and those cell towers will alert all phones connected to them.

I knew about the text alerts, but that was the first time I have ever had that screaming EAS warning coming from a phone. My windows phone and my wife's android phone both got the text alerts, but the other alert came from my windows phone, and about 2 minutes after the text messages... and pretty much scared me out of bed. It sounded just like our weather radio. When I looked at it the phone, there was an opaque message with the weather service alert on it. Behind it, was my weather channel app opened to the severe weather statement. Maybe they work in tandem? or it just was coincidence. Either way, haven't been back to sleep since.

 

[Jtress]

Okay, just minutes after my last post, another tornado spawned just north of us. The message does come from the messaging service and not the app. The app was not open. I had an opaque message over my lockscreen from the NWS along with the screeching alarm. My wife's android only got a regular text message from NWS. I was awake enough this time to see what was going on.
The weather app being open must have just been a fluke. I may have been looking at it last night and left it open.
Regardless, pretty cool feature to have.

 

[Corepc]

I have had the EAS warning has well in SMS.

The Weather App has emergency alerts has well, if turned on it will display a notification. Under Settings Severe Weather Alerts.