Thanks to Kossack Wheever for letting me know about this!
For the last few months, I've included in some of my severe weather diaries and comments a link to the "iMapWeather Radio" app -- an iPhone/iPod Touch app that uses GPS technology to pinpoint your location and deliver you an instant push notification when a severe weather watch or warning is issued for your location. Both the meteorologists and non-weather geeks I know swear by it, so I strongly advocate for iPhone/iPod Touch owners to download it.
The company that created the iMapWeather Radio app is giving away 60,000 free downloads of the app, and I feel it's an important enough app that I need to post this pseudo-advertisement so you guys know about it.
Here's the features list they posted on their iTunes App Store page (bolded emphasis mine):
**GENERAL FEATURES**
• More Precise Alerts: iMap Weather Radio provides more accurate alerts than those offered by typical consumer alerting services. Most of these services will alert you to severe weather if you are in a county only partially covered by a watch or warning, even if you are not actually directly within the watch/warning. iMap Weather Radio ensures you receive an alert only if your device or saved locations fall inside a watch/warning box. That means you aren’t disturbed by alarms not relevant to your location. You also have complete control over what types of alerts you receive through your app. Pick just the type of alerts you want from a list. For example, select only tornado warnings or just winter weather warnings.
• Follow Me: Follow me is a critical feature if you are on the go. Imagine you are driving through an area of adverse weather. This app will alert you if you are in an area when a watch/warning is issued, without you having to do anything. You don’t have to stop and add a new location or query your device.
• Friends and Family: iMap Weather Radio can also save FIVE fixed locations in addition to your current position. This means you can make sure friends and family, at school, out of state, at a ballgame, etc., are safe.
• Battery Management: iMapWeather Radio uses iOS Location Services to strike a balance between location accuracy and battery usage. Background tracking will have some effect on overall battery life. You can control how much accuracy you want the application to use for your location and thus impact the battery management. You may turn off background tracking for battery conservation in the app settings. In this mode iMap Weather Radio will only utilize the GPS when the app is open.
• Audio: iMap Weather Radio provides audio alerts in the form of beeps followed by a brief description of the alert type. The audio could wake you in the middle of the night, or give you information you need when you can’t stop to look at the phone. Furthermore, you can listen to the alerts and forecasts for your area at any time.
• Video: In markets where local media partners participate, you can view streaming video of severe weather coverage for up-to-the-minute information.
Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. is a weather content and technology partner for many major weather brands in the U.S. Weather is our business and weather safety is our passion. To round out your weather app collection, ensure you download our sister application, RadarScope, the most advanced Nexrad radar application in the App Store.
I emphasized the part about the partial warning for those of us who live in really large counties. The NWS issues "polygon warnings," meaning that they only issue a warning for the area that will be immediately impacted by severe weather. If the warning is only for a small part of the county, iMapWeather Radio will only alert you of that warning if you are in the polygon that is in danger of severe weather.
Click this link to redeem your free app and follow the instructions. You must have iTunes downloaded to your computer for this to work. Once you enter the CAPTCHA information to prove that you're not a computer, click "next." You'll see a button called "Redeem Now." Click that button and it'll open up a new window which will prompt the iTunes software on your computer to open. Go through the prompts that iTunes gives you, and it should begin to automatically download the app. Once it downloads, sync your iPhone or iPod Touch and you should be good to go.
I highly recommend this app, even if you have an actual NOAA Weather Radio at your home or office. It's saved lives in the past, and one of the best severe weather meteorologists in the country, James Spann of ABC 33/40 in Birmingham AL, also highly recommends it.
If you don't want to download this app, there are several others out there that work well (but I'm not well enough acquainted with them to be able to give a review or name drop). Also, I strongly encourage you to get a physical NOAA Weather Radio receiver. Look them up on Amazon or Google. Read the bad reviews with a grain of salt -- most of the reviews are bad because the person who wrote it didn't know how to set up the weather radio properly. If you get or have a weather radio that you need help with, email me and I'll be glad to assist you.
If you don't want/can't get the app and you don't want or can't afford a NOAA Weather Radio, go to your local TV news or newspaper's website and see if they have a free email or text alert service for severe weather. Most bigger TV/newspaper markets do offer a service like this. It's not much, but it still gets you warnings ahead of severe weather.
Long story short, download the app if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch. It's free for a limited time. You have no excuse not to.