National Weather Service Alerts

[loanhighknight]

awoken continuously last night due to flood warning spam on my phoen while DND was on. Talk about annoying. Ugh.

I actually thought of this thread when my phone went completely bozonkers last night. I ended up turning the NWS and Amber Alerts off around 11:30 because I was so fed up with it.

It's not installed on your phone without your approval. It's an option. I, for one, am glad to have that option. I'm glad they're concerned enough about people's well being to give us that option. Turn it on or off, whichever you prefer.

And to the people complaining about it. Either turn it off, or be grateful when it saves your life some day.

I don't think there's anybody who's saying that the idea of getting emergency weather alerts is a bad thing; I actually really want to know if a tornado has touched down in my neighborhood. That's not the issue. It's that Apple provides NWS alerts with extremely outsized functionality compared to what they're ALMOST always informing you about. If NWS alerts were only issued in the event of an imminent weather threat, these carrier alerts that ignore DND and make horrifying sounds at you until you acknowledge that you've received the alert would be great. But "imminent weather threat" is just simply not the criteria for issuing an NWS alert (especially where I am). Far from the idealized "wake you up because there's a tornado ripping through your neighborhood" functionality, last night we were woken up because 2.5" of rain fell within 2 hours, which triggers a NWS flash flood warning (and promises of additional warnings later in the night), which in turn prompted me to disable the alerts.

This is an example of bad design implementation--where the functionality provided is used and used wrongly, prompting the user to disable it. The NWS Alerts' overuse conditions users to consider them a needless, alarmist frustration--and Apple willingly gave it a really loud microphone that is even closer to our person.

 

[TheProFTW]

It was big rain storm tho

 

[Jack Dangers]

I like these alerts. They woke me up last night to a crazy rain storm which had my street resembling rapids.
Prompted me to go downstairs and make sure my sump pump was up and running. I have no problem with them ignoring DND since it's for emergency purposes and last night in DC was pretty bad.

 

[kas23]

I live in the DC metro area and received this alert as well. I thought this was going to be reserved for natural disasters, terrorist attacks, etc. It was sprinkling outside. I already have an app that tells me each time rain starts (Dark Skies), I don't need one baked into my iPhone. Perhaps these people never heard the story of the boy who cried wolf when they were kids. Shutting it off now

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I like these alerts. They woke me up last night to a crazy rain storm which had my street resembling rapids.
Prompted me to go downstairs and make sure my sump pump was up and running. I have no problem with them ignoring DND since it's for emergency purposes and last night in DC was pretty bad.

Are you one of those people who put their hazard light on and slow down to 40 mph on 270/495 when it rains?

 

[vreihen]

I have been a paying member of the Weather Underground for years. For $5.00/year, they give you a fully customizable alert system that sends e-mails based on your choices of time of day, location, and weather phenomenon. I also have their iOS app triggering notifications for certain events. Point is, I can choose what and when I want to be alerted, and not have to be disturbed by a flash flood warning for a creek that's 35 miles from my house like Verizon triggered the EAS alert for last weekend.

Oh, and if all y'all think you get too many alerts, I live at the intersection of three different NWS forecast office service areas. We get either three times the alerts or none at all, depending on how large the storm is and whether it is going to cross the NWS jurisdiction lines. The Weather Channel TV alert thingy plays all three NWS office's alerts, and is essentially useless when one office has a tornado warning up and another office issues a flash flood advisory that interrupts it.....

 

[skysailing]

scared the **** out of me yesterday with that sound.

 

[DJLC]

Can anyone confirm if these alerts come through when connected to an AT&T Microcell? I have not received an alert yet and we had a tornado warning a few days ago.

I can't say I've gotten any alerts while on my MicroCell either. Granted, I can only recall getting one alert since that update rolled out, despite some recent and persistent storms / flooding issues.

 

[AbSoluTc]

Where is the option to turn this off/on? I have never received an alert like this on my phone. iOS 6 or 7.

Thanks!

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

This looks like the next car alarm... Becoming so common, they turn into an annoyance and people largely ignore them.

Reminds me of a well known story from my kindergarten days...

 

[theonekcrow]

I can't say I've gotten any alerts while on my MicroCell either. Granted, I can only recall getting one alert since that update rolled out, despite some recent and persistent storms / flooding issues.

I think this doesn't work while connected to a Microcell, because if I understand it correctly, the notification is pushed to all compatible devices within range of the tower it is pushed to. Because the microcell is not a "tower" that receives those updates (because it is giving you cell signal based on your home internet) then they won't be pushed to you when your connected to it. Maybe one day AT&T could roll out a software update to let it receive those updates, as it has GPS capabilities.