How to get weather alerts on your phone, and which ones never arrive
Your phone already receives tornado and flash flood warnings, but not watches, not advisories and not severe thunderstorm warnings unless they are extreme. Here is what arrives, what does not, and how to fill the gaps.
Every phone sold in the US since 2012 can receive Wireless Emergency Alerts, the loud, unmistakable buzz that carries tornado warnings. The system is run by FEMA and the FCC, and the National Weather Service is its biggest user. It is also narrower than most people assume. Around 30,000 Americans a month search for how to get weather alerts, and the answer starts with what the built-in system leaves out.
What reaches your phone automatically
The NWS sends only its most dangerous warnings over WEA, because the channel cannot be muted for individual hazards and overuse would train people to ignore it. The list:
- Tornado Warning
- Flash Flood Warning, but only when tagged "considerable" or "catastrophic" (since 2021; ordinary flash flood warnings no longer buzz)
- Severe Thunderstorm Warning, only when tagged "destructive" (80 mph gusts or baseball-size hail, since 2021)
- Hurricane, Typhoon and Storm Surge Warnings
- Extreme Wind Warning
- Dust Storm Warning and Snow Squall Warning
- Tsunami Warning
Not on the list: any watch, any advisory, Winter Storm Warnings, Ice Storm Warnings, Blizzard Warnings, Red Flag Warnings, heat and cold warnings, and standard severe thunderstorm warnings. If you rely on the buzz alone, you will sleep through most winter storms and every fire weather day.
Check the settings
iPhone: Settings, Notifications, scroll to the bottom to Government Alerts. Keep Emergency Alerts on. Android: Settings, Safety and emergency (or Notifications), Wireless emergency alerts; on older phones it is inside the Messages app. If you have turned these off after an AMBER alert at 3 AM, note that on most phones AMBER and weather alerts are separate toggles. WEA uses the cell towers near you, not your billing address, so it works when you travel and does not work when the towers are down.
Filling the gaps
- NOAA Weather Radio: a dedicated receiver with SAME county coding wakes you for every NWS warning in your county, including winter and fire products, and works with no cell service or internet. It is the only alert channel that survives a tower outage, which is why emergency managers still recommend one per household.
- The NWS itself: the agency has no official app, but weather.gov pages for your location list every active product, and local offices post on social media. The FEMA app relays NWS alerts for up to five locations.
- Built-in phone weather apps: Apple Weather and Google's weather surface NWS warnings and some advisories as notifications, but the rules differ by version and are not documented; treat them as a supplement.
- Local TV station apps: the most complete push alerts for a single metro area, and the loudest. Fine if you live in one place.
- This site: every US city page shows the active NWS watches, warnings and advisories at the top, pulled live from the NWS feed, next to the three-model forecast. The Houston page is one example; open yours from the US city list.
Know what the words mean before the buzz
The alert arrives with a few seconds to read it, which is not the moment to learn the vocabulary. Watch vs warning is the foundation; tornado watch vs warning covers the one that matters most in the middle of the night, and the winter ladder covers the products that never buzz at all. For the storms themselves, the US radar shows where they are, and our accuracy scoreboard shows which forecast model to believe about where they are going.