Saturday, January 23, 2010

Weather radio fatigue

I really don't like my weather radio.

I got it for the tornado warnings, but it seems to be going off all the time. Thunderstorms, tornado watches, etc. Even if we snooze it, if something changes in the warning they reissue it and the thing is blaring again. The worst part is that if any part of the county is affected, all of the county is warned, both with the radios and the sirens.

Thanks to our visit to the WAAY TV station with the scouts the other night, I learned that their station has a $7/yr service called "weathercall" that will call your phone or send you a text message* whenever your address is actually threatened by one of those storms.

I love it, no more guilty feelings at 2am when the sirens go off and I go back to sleep, instead of getting up and going downstairs to turn on the TV.

And no, I'm not connected to them at all, I just think it's cool. Hopefully someday they'll have the same thing but keyed off the location of my cellphone...
* Actually it will call/email up to 3 numbers and 3 email addresses.

UPDATE: It's not just an AL thing, it works for any address across the country.

UPDATE 2: I just got an email from the weatherguy saying that the iPhone app is on its way -- I wonder how it'll know where I am if background apps aren't allowed?

2 comments:

Hi! I'm Sierra-Dog! said...

That is way cool. The Grans live in NE and I remember the radios and sirens when visiting their house in the summer.
Where did the picture come from?

Renee

author said...

We had a small tornado go through Huntsville on the 21st, that's a picture of it off the WAAY TV website.

Does anyone read this thing?

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