Heavy Rainfall in the East Wednesday; Hot Temperatures Continue in Coastal Southern California

Heavy to excessive rainfall may lead to flooding Wednesday over southwest Pennsylvania into northern West Virginia, and western Maryland. Flood Watches have been issued. An extended period of hot weather will continue for parts of coastal southern California including Los Angeles through Thursday. Heat Advisories remain in effect. Read More >

Strengths: (1) Immediate alert and receipt of warnings. (2) Most applications can be configured to be alerted for as many or as few advisories, watches, and warnings as the user wants. (3) The more sophisticated applications are location-specific. Your phone will only be alerted if/when a warning is in effect for your exact location.
Weaknesses: (1) Due to the volume of applications, choosing the one that’s best for your needs can be challenging. (2) The more sophisticated applications can cost $10-$20.

Finally, the National Weather Service is making increasing use of Social Media technology, not only to “get the word out” about warnings and other critical weather information, but also to collect reports of severe weather and other vital information that meteorologists use in their warning decision making process. Although the NWS does automatically post warnings to Facebook and Twitter, we discourage the use of these tools as a primary means of receiving warnings. However, social media allows you the customer to become an important component of the warning process. By “retweeting” or “liking” Facebook postings of NWS warnings and/or severe weather reports, our message can propagate quickly to your subscribers who may not have other means of receiving warnings. Additionally, Facebook posting or tweeting your observations of hail, wind damage, and flooding to the National Weather Service may be of vital importance to forecasters making warning decisions.