5 posts tagged with "Improved"

Quiet hours let you silence a phone number or email address overnight. Each one has an Override for critical warnings setting, and when it is turned on, a short list of the most urgent alerts comes through anyway.

That list now covers 13 more event types:

• Evacuation and shelter in place orders
• Tsunami warnings
• Extreme wind warnings
• Earthquake, volcano, and avalanche warnings
• Fire warnings
• Hazardous materials, radiological hazard, and nuclear power plant warnings
• Civil danger and law enforcement warnings

Tornado, Severe Thunderstorm, and Flash Flood Warnings were already covered and are unchanged.

Every alert added here names something you would need to act on immediately, at any hour. Alerts that give you hours or days of notice still wait for your quiet hours to end, by design: a hurricane warning issued at 3am tells you the same thing at 7am, and waking you for it would make the setting worth turning off. Extreme heat warnings work the same way.

Nothing changes unless you have turned the override on for a channel. You can review the setting for each of your phone numbers and email addresses on the Delivery Channels page, under Quiet hours.

Four improvements to how alerts read and when they reach you.

Alert times now show the issuing office's local time​

Every alert tells you how long the hazard is in effect, and that time is now labeled in the local time of the National Weather Service office that issued it, matching the wording in the official product itself.

Two places this was previously wrong:

• Arizona alerts showed "PDT" through the summer. Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, so they now correctly show MST year round.
• Puerto Rico alerts showed "EDT" from spring through fall. They now correctly show AST.

If you have locations in either place, validity times were labeled an hour off from what the official alert said. They now agree.

Rules match a product even when the name is spelled differently​

The Weather Service occasionally issues the same product under a slightly different name or capitalization. A rule built on the standard name used to quietly miss those issuances, with no indication anything had been skipped.

Rules now match all known variant forms of a product automatically. Nothing to change on your end, and no rule needs rebuilding. Alert history shows the standard name, so past and future alerts for the same product read consistently.

More life-safety alerts reach you at your monthly SMS limit​

A small set of the most urgent alerts is delivered by text even after an organization reaches its monthly SMS limit. That set now covers 15 more event types:

• Evacuation and shelter in place orders
• Tsunami advisories (tsunami warnings were already covered)
• Volcano, ashfall, and avalanche warnings
• Earthquake warnings
• Hazardous materials, radiological hazard, and nuclear power plant warnings
• Extreme heat warnings
• Typhoon warnings
• Fire warnings
• Civil danger and law enforcement warnings

Watches, advisories, and forecast based alerts are unchanged: those still pause at the limit, and a message at the limit tells you so.

One shape on the map for each alert​

When the Weather Service reissues an alert, the map now shows one shape for it instead of stacked duplicates.

Nothing here requires any action. If you want more headroom before non urgent alerts pause, see your plan's SMS allowance on the Billing page.

Track a Garmin inReach as a live location. Paste a MapShare link from the Locations page and the location follows the device, so your alerts travel with a vehicle, a crew, or a person instead of staying pinned to an address.

What is new​

• Track a Garmin inReach as a live location — paste a MapShare link from the Locations page (password-protected shares supported) and the location follows the device, with positions checked about every 10 minutes.
• Alerts move with the device — watches, warnings, and advisories, severe weather outlooks, and forecast thresholds all evaluate against the device's current position.
• Breadcrumb trail on the map with 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day views, plus a last-fix indicator that turns amber after 2 hours and red after 12.
• Pause and resume tracking anytime, and update the MapShare password without re-registering. Position history is kept for one year.
• Available on Starter and above — 1 tracked device on Starter, 3 on Standard, 10 on Pro, 25 on Enterprise.

Fixed​

• Editing a location's position now updates its forecast values immediately.

Add one from the Locations page: choose Track a device, paste your MapShare link, and enter the share password if you set one. See Tracking a Garmin inReach for the full walkthrough.

Severe-outlook and forecast-threshold rules cover the contiguous US. Watches, warnings, and advisories work everywhere the National Weather Service issues them, including Alaska.

Creating an alert rule, changing its conditions, or re-enabling it now evaluates immediately against every active watch, warning, advisory, outlook, and forecast threshold — new or loosened rules alert within seconds instead of waiting for the next data cycle. Tightening a rule quietly closes the alerts it no longer covers, recorded in the alert timeline, and loosening it back reopens them with history intact. Collection changes count too: adding a location to a collection a rule targets alerts right away.

What is new​

• New rules alert immediately — save a rule and it checks every hazard already in effect, so a rule written during a storm fires for that storm.
• Edits apply on save — widen a threshold, add a product, lower a severity floor, or re-enable a paused rule, and the change takes effect at once.
• Tightening closes what it no longer covers — narrow a rule and the alerts it stopped covering close quietly, with no all-clear text or SMS. The closure is recorded on the alert as "Alert rule conditions changed" so the timeline still explains itself.
• Loosening reopens, it does not duplicate — put the condition back while the weather is still active and the original alert reopens with its full history, rather than arriving as a second alert.
• Collections are wired in — adding a location to a collection one of your rules targets checks it right away; removing it, or deleting the collection, closes just the alerts that location no longer qualifies for.

Behind the scenes​

Pausing a rule now closes its open alerts instead of leaving them to expire on their own, and deleting a collection no longer leaves alerts stranded on rules that pointed at it. Rules whose last target is removed are kept, not deleted — they simply go quiet until you point them somewhere again.

There is nothing to turn on. Edit a rule on the Rules page, or change a collection's locations on the Collections page, and the change takes effect immediately.

When a storm sweeps across your portfolio, you used to get a separate text for every location in its path. Now we group them: a single message listing all affected properties, so a fast-moving severe thunderstorm warning reads as one clear update instead of a buzzing pocket. Alerts that require acknowledgment still arrive individually, so a reply always refers to exactly one location.