National Weather Service shares how alerts are sent to East Texans
TYLER, Texas (KETK)– The National Weather Service in Fort Worth and Shreveport issued dozens of alerts on Friday as severe storms ripped through East Texas.
A team of trained forecasters work together to identify key ingredients in the atmosphere that would classify a severe thunderstorm watch/warning, flash flooding and tornado watch/warning.
'When the warning is issued, that's when we want you to take action, which usually means seek shelter and then seek additional information,' meteorologist with the National Weather Service Fort Worth office Jennifer Dunn said.
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Dunn said the emergency alert notification through the NWS is sent mostly by email to local TV, radio stations and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
'When the text editor is launched, the system is also smart enough to put an initial guess of where that polygon box or that warning box should be. We hit send and it sends out the warning through multiple dissemination methods at this time,' Dunn said.
FEMA then sends their alerts to county emergency management offices. 'The wireless emergency alerts through FEMA are using the weather service's warnings to disseminate and alert all of mobile devices within the warning polygon. They don't necessarily go off for every warning that we issue, but they go off for the higher end,' Dunn said.
East Texas counties use the alert system called RAVE or 911 alerts, funded by the East Texas Council of Governments (ETCOG). ETCOG has funded the program for 12 years from an $80,000 Homeland Security grant with their public safety division.
People who live in the county are not required to sign up, but experts highly encourage it.
'Relying on the tornado sirens or the outdoor warning sirens should be essentially your last line of defense when it comes to knowing that there is bad weather moving into the area, especially with the technology that we have today,' Dunn said.
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The National Weather Service encourages people to have several alert sources and to have multiple alert sources and have a go-bag ready just in case.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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