• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Weather Alerts to a Pager

Joined
Apr 1, 2004
Messages
1,477
Location
Wichita
I asked this question a year or two ago and somebody gave me a good company to use, but I have since forgotten it and I really don't want to dig through the archives to find it. I was thinking about getting a pager again to get watches and warnings on (I should get warnings on my XM, but for some reason this product hasn't worked in a year and a half). I have had some serious problems with weather radio coverage this year too. I was wondering if anybody uses this service and if so what do you use and what do they offer. There are tons of free services from local news stations and other organizatioins, but with some of those there are some negatives that come along with the free service. Any suggestions on what to use would be appreciated. I don't mind paying a little bit for a monthly service fee. If anybody knows how to accomplish the same thing in a different way, such as the best way to get a weather radio signal, I would be open to that too. It's the ends that I'm after so I don't really care about the means.
 
In addition, if you already have a cell phone you might want to consider using it's SMS text messaging or e-mail capabilities to receive such incoming alerts.. no point paying for something else if you already have the means.
 
I considered using my cell, but I am already going to be using it for calls and internet access and I don't want to have that interupted all the time with incoming test messages.
 
I use Wunderground for all my alerts, which I did use to use with a pager. So long as the pager has an email address, which I'm assuming it does, then you can set it up to get pages for any county for any watch/warning. I'm not sure if it's only a paid feature but if it is just send me a PM and I'll get you a free 1yr subscription (it's only $10/yr after that).
 
It looks like you can only do it for one county going through that government site. I would like to have it for all of Kansas. The won't work outside Kansas, so anything outside of this state won't do any good. I can get alerts from KWCH for the whole state, but when they issues watches you get a seperate page for every county that is covered. That is kind of a pain. You also get flood warnings with that service, which I would rather not have.
 
I'm the weather dispatcher with this company, and I think we do a pretty good job. Check out www.incidentnewsalerts.com, you can sign up for what weather alerts you want to recieve and for what locations you want to recieve. You can have the alerts emailed to you, or sent to any mobile device of your choice..
 
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Another service provider is http://www.stormnow.com/. Their subscription is $2 per month and they have a free 2 week trial. You can configure multiple profiles. I have ones that I activate during severe season that send discussions. I have hurricane profiles that I activate during hurricanes. I also have state specific profiles that I activate when chasing in a particular state. You can select any NOAA Port products that you wish to receive at a county level. The timeliness of delivery is incredible. When I’ve worked the Ham desk at the local forecast office I’ve seen about a 2-5 second response time from when a warning is sent till I have the email on my Blackberry. I have no pecuniary interest in this company; just have been a satisfied user for the past 7 years.
 
The problem I’ve seen with some handsets is that the amount of text in SMS messages is limited.

If anybody knows how to accomplish the same thing in a different way, such as the best way to get a weather radio signal, I would be open to that too. It's the ends that I'm after so I don't really care about the means.

An external antenna would probably help.
 
I have a scanner I have used for years with an external antenna to get weather radio. I was going to get a handheld ham radio this year to get weather radio because whenever I chase with others who have ham radio they get a weather radio signal way farther out than I do with my scanner. I went up to the radio shack to get one and the clown that worked there talked me into a new antenna for my scanner instead. He said it would be just as good as getting a ham to recieve weather radio. Well on my next chase my friend brought his handheld ham radio and he was getting a signal (without an external antenna) and I wasn't getting one with my scanner that had an external antenna. That is the second time that guy at Radio Shack has screwed me.
The one disadvantage to the weather radio vs. the pager is that you won't get warning and watches for anything outside your immediate area.
 
I second the http://stormnow.com/ site. I've used it since '99 and cannot get over how good it is. I am amazed when my pager goes off before my weather radio on occasion. That's how quick it is.

Just some suggestions to those above. I don't recommend SMS if you can avoid it. One of the things about that is the limited character count (like around 160 chars). Once you get the bulletin title, you're going to get shorted the additional data unless you have Stormnow (or other service) parse it up for you. But then you're waiting on 10 messages about a SVR warning.

Stormnow, btw (and not to sound like a salesman) has an INCREDIBLY easy user interface and it is highly customizable to boot. A very nice product. But, weather info is big and really requires email.

If you have a service provider such as Sprint, you can set it up so that you are notified (free) when an email message to your Sprint account is received real-time. I have set up my PocketPC (6700) to automatically retrieve those emails ("push email") so that I get the actual text real-time. It's wonderful.

During svr season I get the SWODY1 text, MCDs and watch box texts. I have the area limited to where I am geographically (I update my location nightly) and get very nice, targeted information. Anyway, if anyone needs help setting up a PPC device, feel free to PM me and I'll talk you through it.

Hope this helps :)
 
Stormnow is what I was looking for. Somebody posted this site last year when I was considering getting a pager and it looked great, but I backed out of getting the pager last year.
One other question, when I went to look at pagers last year they told me you could only get statewide coverage for your pager. They said if you wanted national coverage you would only get messages when you got into major cities. On the state wide coverage they said you would get coverage just about anywhere. That doesn't make much sense to me, but whatever. Does anybody know if you can get a pager service that covers multiple states in the plains, while still getting coverage without being in a major city?
Thanks for all the help BTW.
 
...could only get statewide coverage for your pager. They said if you wanted national coverage you would only get messages when you got into major cities. On the state wide coverage they said you would get coverage just about anywhere. That doesn't make much sense to me....

Heya Michael--I guess I'm not understanding the question entirely. If you're referring to the Stormnow service, you can get multiple states, multiple products, multiple counties...it's almost unlimited (or limited by how many profiles you choose to maintain which can affect pricing plans).

If you're referring to a pager service itself, i.e., Pagenet or some other service, it depends on coverage of your pager similar to a coverage map for a cellular service. However, the pager should still send you the messages you want wherever service exists. It would help to understand specifics: which issue are you specifically needing clarified :)?
 
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