I work in a weather information vacuum.
In the office where I work, we’re restricted from accessing the internet from our workstations. We are not allowed to receive email from outside the company. We’re also restricted from having anything at our desks that “plugs in” that’s not work related. As far as I know, there is one NOAA weather radio in the building; and in 2 1/2 years, I’ve never heard a building-wide weather alert go out. (Although we do have a yearly tornado drill.) Generally, the best way to tell what the weather is doing is look out the window. Which is a valuable tool, but doing so tends to attract supervisors who want you to get back to work. So I need a way to keep an eye on what’s happening outside, but keep working in the meantime.
One way to do that is read the daily weather report before I head out for work. (Actually, I read the forecast the night before, too.) I have a bookmark set to the NWS local forecast for Madison, WI. That way, I have some idea what to expect. Some days I’m running late though, and I might forget to check the forecast. Or, what the forecast says at 0600 when I read it might no longer apply later in the day; I sometimes work from 0700 to 1600, and then work my part time job at night until 2230 or later.
What I really need is a way to go about my business, and worry about the weather only when necessary– without having to monitor NOAA weather radio unless something really is going on. (I can listen to weather radio on my HT, but that drains the battery which I might need later. Remember, no 12v power supply at my desk.)
In order to get around the “no email” restriction at work, I have an email address for my cellphone. (I can also send and receive SMS text messages on my phone.) So I can receive emailed weather alerts, but they’re usually loaded down with lots of text and advertising that are just too much for a phone. Fortunately, Channel3000.com has a service that sends the title of the weather alert, and the effective times to your cellphone’s email address. (Make sure you check the “Send alert to pager/phone” box.) I’ve been using the service for over a year, and it works very well.
However, my cellphone’s email address isn’t something I want to give out; once it’s out in the wild, it’s liable to end up on some spammer’s list of addresses. So I added a layer between my phone and Channel3000. I entered my Google Gmail address when I signed up for the weather alerts. Now the alert goes from Channel3000.com to Gmail, where I have a filter set up to autoforward the message to my cellphone. End result is I get notified whenever a severe weather statement, advisory, watch or warning is issued or updated. I don’t get the full text; just that a bulletin has been sent, which lets me know that I need to go find out what’s really happening (or is going to happen soon).
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