Product Lists

WxNotify uses the term "Product List" to refer to what you want to be notified for. "Products" are short textual bulletins issued by the National Weather Service to convey weather information to the public. Subscribers will probably notice that the term "product" is used frequently throughout the WxNotify website. Products can be anything from a lower-priority zone forecast, to the more serious tornado, severe thunderstorm, or flash flood warnings. When WxNotify receives a new product issued by the National Weather Service, the system scans its information to determine exactly what kind of weather information is contained, the locations that are affected, and for how long the product should be considered "active".

When you create a product list, you choose from one or more products, split up into the following categories, with the most important categories at the top:

• Tornado and Severe Thunderstorm
• Flooding and Hydrological
• Winter Weather
• Non-Precipitation
• Fire Weather
• Hurricane and Tropical Storm
• Coastal
• Marine
• Other Forecasts, Outlooks, Discussions, and Reports
• Non-Meteorological Hazards and Administrative Messages
• Airport-related
  

Tornadoes have occurred in every state in the United States at one time or another, (even Alaska, although very rare) and can occur year-round. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you have at least one alert with a product list containing Tornado Warning (TOW) products. The corresponding Alert should also be used with a Schedule that notifies for any time of day, since tornadoes can and often do occur during night time hours. When you initially sign up for a WxNotify account, an Alert is automatically created that notifies you of Tornado Warnings for your location at any time of day.

It is also recommended that you create alerts containing more serious products that could affect your geographical location. For example, those subscribers that live near the southeast coast along the Atlantic ocean and Gulf of Mexico may want to be notified by Hurricane and Tropical Storm products. Likewise, subscribers in the more northern states may want to be alerted for Winter Weather products.

Each product has a corresponding 3-letter abbreviation and color assigned to it. Typically the lighter colors are reserved for lower priority products like forecasts, while the darker, bolder colors are for higher priority products like watches, warnings, and advisories.

Now that WxNotify is integrated with the Pushover service, you can now assign priorities to products and use the Product List it in conjunction with a Contact using Pushover when creating an Alert. To choose priorities for products, click the blue Pushover button (labeled 'P') at the top of the window when creating or editing a product list:

Drop-down menus will appear to the right of every product, allowing you to choose between the following Pushover priorities:

* Lowest

* Low

* Normal

* High

* Emergency

When creating a Contact using Pushover, you can choose from one of several different sounds that will play on your mobile device when you get an alert based on the priorities set in the corresponding product list. Also, within the Pushover mobile app, you can assign different actions based on priority. A common way to use priorities would be to assign Emergency priority to Tornado Warnings (TOW) since it is typically an emergency situation when a Tornado Warning is issued for your location. Emergency priority alerts will continue to notify you until they are confirmed. This would be very good for Tornado Warnings being issued overnight when you may be asleep.

To create a new Product List, simple enter a name (e.g. My Products) and use the toggle buttons to the left of each product to enable or disable. You can enable or disable all products within a specific category by using the "All On / All Off" links:

Severe Thunderstorms can be life-threatening, but not all severe storms are the same. Hazardous conditions range from tornadoes, large hail storms, and widespread straight-line winds called derechoes, to cloud-to-ground lightning and flash flooding. Starting on August 2nd, 2021, the National Weather Service has begun to better convey the severity and potential impacts from thunderstorm winds and hail by adding a “damage threat” tag to Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, similar to our Tornado and Flash Flood Warnings.

You will see under the "Tornado and Severe T-Storm Watches, Warnings, and Statements" category there are now three different Tornado Warnings, and three different Severe Thunderstorm Warnings. If you choose the product labeled "Tornado Warning (Baseline/Any Threat)", you will be notified by all Tornado Warnings. However, choosing one of the other Tornado Warning products (Considerable or Catastrophic), you will only be notified for Tornado Warnings which contain the specific damage threat. Similarly, choosing the product "Severe Thunderstorm Warning (Baseline/Any Threat)" will notify you for any Severe Thunderstorm products, however choosing either "Considerable" or "Destructive" will only notify you for Severe Thunderstorm Warnings containing those specific threats:

To read more information about these new threat tags, you may visit this link.

WxNotify subscribers can create up to ten (10) Product Lists.