Weather warnings on your smart phone

[Mike Johnston]

I have to admit I'm pretty impressed about weather warnings now being relayed directly over the cell phone. This will reach thousands of more people than previous conventional modes. My wife just recently called me about a flash flood warning for our area; she had never before been alert to any weather situation. This could make NOAA weather radio practically obsolete. Question: does anyone know if these alerts are tailored to go out to people just in the actual warning polygon, or are they approximations based on the counties, areas, etc.?

 

[Dave C]

"This could make NOAA weather radio practically obsolete."


While cell phone alerts are certainly reaching many more people who do not have a weather radio, I don't think they will make weather radio obsolete for some time, if ever. If your cell phone battery dies, or you forgot your phone, a weather radio on premise that you don't have to think about is much more useful. In a power outage you can still use off the shelf batteries to power a weather radio, where you would have a much harder time continuously powering a cell phone. Even more importantly, in many rural and mountainous areas, weather radio reception is MUCH more trustworthy due to the frequencies of transmission. Thats not even to mention that CMAS/WEA alerts are not provided by every carrier or in every region yet.

Its cool that they have these cell phone warnings but I don't think its safe to rely on them alone just yet.

As far as where the alerts are sent, from NOAA's page on WEA: "WEA messages are broadcast using radio-like technology from cell towers in, and sometimes around, the actual warning area. Therefore, an alert can reach cell phones outside of the actual warning area depending on the broadcast range of the cell towers which broadcast the alert. This overreach is typically more prevalent in rural areas than in more densely populated cities." So I think the answer to whether its polygons or counties is: yes, and no - its an approximation based on the warning area.

 

[rdale]

Weather radios have been obsolete for many years. They still use 1980s technology in a 2010s world, and the usage goes down annually. Less than 5% get alerts from NWR these days.

WEA is polygon based. Unfortunately the messages are too brief to be of much value, but they are a good first start for the government. Anyone in a risk area needs a real app though or some other notification tool.

 

[STexan]

hmmm ... all I know is I received hundreds of warnings/alerts on my wx radio while in travel mode during the 2013 season, and I got exactly 0 (zero) alerts on my cell phone. If this is something you have to somehow sign up for then that's fine and dandy except How do you sign up and what if you travel a lot? (if it asks for a region code or something you wish to monitor)

I thought I was fairly tech savvy and generally ahead of the curve on communication technology and means but this one I missed completely, and if I missed it, I'm certain millions more missed it.

 

[rdale]

You don't do anything. If your phone is compatible and your provider is onboard, you'll get them automatically.

 

[STexan]

I have a 1.5 year old windows phone (one OS version older then current) on ATT and received no alerts.

 

[Robert Edmonds]

A few friends of mine also started receiving warnings from their phones. Most of them were complaining, and trying to figure out how to disable them. Figures...
It was a surprise to me as well to learn some phones have started receiving these alerts.

 

[Rob H]

You don't do anything. If your phone is compatible and your provider is onboard, you'll get them automatically.

Well, some older phones needed an update, so some people need to do something still. I had to manually get my 3 year old Motorola Droid X to receive the alerts, but my brand new Samsung S4 got them out of the box. If the phone is from 2012 or later though, you're probably good.

Unfortunately, I think they messed up the implementation. They tied in Amber Alerts, Flash Flood Warnings, and some other stuff. So the alerts are no longer "your life is in imminent danger" but now "oh, some stuff is going on near you, consider this like a government tweet. How's it going? Sharknado was pretty sweet, huh?". Several of my friends have turned them off because of Flash Flood warnings.

 

[rdale]

Oh they really screwed up implementation. You can turn off Amber Alerts separate from weather warnings, but for some stupid reason they think a 36-hr notice Blizzard Warning issued at 3am is LIFE CRITICAL and you cannot turn those off, or FFWs for non-life threatening rain, without losing TORs as well.

 

[Matt Tottle]

Rob - I agree with you that it's a bit ridiculous to use CMAS for warnings such as blizzard, hurricane, high wind, etc.. It's kind of hard to not know something like that is coming, because you probably already saw it on TV three days ago. And you are not the first one I've heard complaining about FFW - however I bet if you ask the people I've seen on the news recently being picked out of trees by helicopter if they'd have appreciated a FFW heads-up they would. But I agree just as one can disable weather alerts as a group, there should be a submenu that allows you to pick which weather alerts you receive.

As far as receiving the alerts, I believe new CMAS-capable phones come with it enabled by default, but on my phone (Samsung Galaxy S2) they were off by default. I had to dial a code (##CMAS#) to unhide the hidden menu - and then I could enable the alerts.

It's also entirely possible that the 1.5 year old phone did not have it implemented. My phone is 1.5 years old too, and it is one of only about 10 phones that were listed as CMAS-capable at that time.

Activation - as far as I understand, all cell towers within the polygon broadcast the alert continuously for the duration of the warning. This is to ensure that people traveling into the polygon after the initial activation still receive the warning. So depending on range and line of sight, it could be possible to receive an unintended warning from outside the polygon. However this is nothing new, since NWR alerts still go out county-wide regardless of what part of the county is within the polygon. I had gone into that a while ago about nuisance activations. It makes for complacency when the radio goes off for a threat that is nowhere near you - especially when it happens at 3am. What pisses me off about it is that the infrastructure to reduce the NWR activation area is already in place (it was designed in as part of the SAME protocol), but they will not utilize it for whatever reason.

 

[Damon Lewis]

Phone alerts are nice. You can set some apps to notify you of your home, work, etc area and it will use the devices GPS to notify you of alerts of any location that you are at.
The downside were noted well. Mostly coverage, battery, and the same downside that has plagued weather radios, understanding how to properly configure them for the areas and alerts you wish to receive.

I don't like the weather radios as you get 3 seconds of the alert activation, then 3 seconds of the alert tone then a typically large amount of text (designed for reading) is interpreted by the text to speech program. The format of the warnings for audio broadcast are too bulky IMO.

But, during a power outage, especially an extended one when you don't have a generator, a weather radio remains priceless.

 

[ELY M.]

I have samsung s3 phone which is made in 2012. I get many alerts on my phone.
I have Fancy Widgets installed and that app do give me alerts all of the time.
I also have other android phone and this phone give me alerts too.
I went in tornado watch areas and my phones start to give me alerts for tor watch.

 

[rdale]

Ely, they WEA program being discussed here doesn't alert for watches.

 

[Matt Tottle]

Yeah, you are getting the alerts through an app. It may be pre-programmed to pull alerts by zip code, or it may use positioning data to determine alerts that apply.. These apps are notoriously slow in alerting due to their "pull" nature (they have to check periodically, and the interval might be 15 minutes or more), and they will not alert if you do not have data service. But it is not CMAS.

CMAS is built into the phone, and it is activated via a special data signal that is transmitted with the voice cell signal directly from towers in the affected area - similar to text messaging.