[telecom] that Texas horror ques: what "level" are the NOAA cellphone alerts?

Jul 08, 2025 Last reply: 1 year ago 1 Replies

"level" used a bit loosely...



expanding: there are diffferent levels of alerts and you can, for example, tell your phone to ignore "Amber" (missing children) pageouts. Numerous others, too.



But you can NOT (or shouldn't be able to) shut off the highest level ones, i.e., the Presidential "you have 10 minutes until nuclear self destruct".



Anyone know what category NOAA alerts come under?



Thanks



_____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key snipped-for-privacy@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]


I don't, but I do know that NOAA/NWS has been the subject of a lot of criticism in the past for issuing excessive weather warnings through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, particularly flash-flood alerts, particularly at night, leading people to disable those alerts on their phones and miss important alerts. NWS was supposed to have recalibrated their thresholds for WEAs but many people may still have them disabled.

On my phone, I have the following high-level categories:

National Extreme Severe AMBER Public safety State and local tests

I have "extreme" and "severe" enabled and never get any so I don't have a message history to inspect.

-GAWollman

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