The National Weather Service will start sending text alerts to your mobile phone if dangerous weather is near your location.
"This is a system that you don't have to sign up for anything," said Mark Fox, warning and coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Fort Worth office. "If you are in a tornado warning or in a flash flood warning, those alerts are going to come straight to your cellphone just like the Amber Alerts do."
The alerts, which have a different ring tone than others, will be delivered to any smartphone from the last two to three years.
The alert provides the warning and watch information as well as what you need to do to protect yourself.
The information is delivered based on what tower your mobile phone is accessing, so that no matter where you are in the country, you'll receive an alert if the tower your phone is accessing is within the warning area.
"It's a different frequency, no one is tracking your GPS, no one is selling your information," said Fox. "It's just for warning purposes and to let you know I really need to be paying attention to weather right now."
Weather Connection
Connecting you with your forecast and all the things that make North Texas weather unique.
Allowing location services and turning on push notifications will give you the latest NWS alerts as well.
The app gives you interactive radar literally at your fingertips which allows you to zoom in on your neighborhood.
Plus, you'll get hourly, daily and 10-day forecasts as well as NBC 5 meteorologists' written and video forecasts and weather news from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
To get the NBC 5 First Alert Weather app for free, just search NBC 5 or NBC DFW in the App Store or in Google Play or click the links below:
