swas blog

• …National Weather Service proposes an experimental use of email updates to provide information….
  This experiment is intended to explore methods to increase dissemination and availability of NWS information and to allow consolidation of several existing email dissemination systems and reduce duplication of effort within the agency.

• …Severe weather across the Southeast…
  Over 50 reports of severe weather were received over the weekend, mostly on Sunday across parts of the southeastern United States. Several injuries were reported in North Carolina. Severe weather is possible Monday across parts of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, far southern Virginia and across parts of southern Florida.

• …Tsunami Awareness Week – March 21-27…
  Tsunami Awareness Week Message from President Obama: “During this week, we pay tribute to those lost and recommit ourselves to preparing our shores and protecting our citizens.”

An error is occurring when users click on our warning links in the tweets. Once they arrive to our warning page and click on the links for any warning to obtain full details, they are redirected to a page that says the warning has expired. In most cases these warnings are still active. Please observe the correct warning in the tweet and treat it as though it still active. The problem is not occurring with observations and we have contacted NWS to start ruling out the source of the issue. We will update you with more details as we obtain them.

Update 4:30 am 3/21/10:

The problem has been fixed. Apparently, the National Weather Service changed a url embedded within each feed page and our contacts at NWS were initially unaware that such a change had occurred.  This is why it took up until 4:30 am Sunday morning to find and correct the problem. We have notified NWS and informed them of the oversight and asked for a formal explanation, as well as a corrective course for future situations that may be similar to this one. All apologies for the delay and we will report back on what we hear further on this matter from NWS.

Update 2 11:30 am 3/22/10:

NWS notified us yesterday they were looking into the problem we had just brought to their attention regarding incorrect url’s being embedded into their feeds. Within the last hour or so NWS switched back to the old links. Despite not being notified, we caught the switch and have yet again altered our code to match NWS and assure that the system works for our end users. We will update further when we have heard back from NWS.