The National Weather Service will soon start sending severe weather warnings to millions of smartphone owners in the U.S., the Associated Press reports.
Wireless Emergency Alerts will warn users about the following threats -- tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, flash floods, extreme winds, blizzards and ice and dust storms.
A warning, which will show up to all users in a county, will include a message with no more than 90 characters, and late-model smartphones will sound a special tone and vibrate. The system will be free and it will not require users to sign up for the service.
The system is part of a larger initiative by the FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) called the Emergency Alert System (EAS), which can also send out public safety warnings from the president as well as AMBER alerts from state and local authorities. Users will be able to opt out of both weather alerts and AMBER alerts, but not presidential alerts.
U.S. carriers serving nearly 97% of subscribers are participating in the initiative, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA. It's unclear, however, which smartphones are capable of receiving the alerts.
According to a Sprint spokeswoman, most Sprint smartphones have been upgraded to be able to receive the alerts, and all upcoming devices will have the functionality as well. iPhones are not on that list yet, and according to weather service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan they should be joining the system this fall, but she couldn't answer whether that means new iPhones, old models or both.
Recently we've seen several similar initiatives, mostly based on social media. The Weather Channel is building a social media weather alert system, and Dallas authorities turned to Twitter for severe weather warnings earlier this year.