The IPAWS/OPEN program office has advised all users of the All Alerts feed, including REC, to changes being made by the National Weather Service (NWS).
As of July 21, 2023 (we only received the notice on July 27), the NWS is reducing the types of messages that they are sending to Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) and the IPAWS All Alerts feed, both of which are monitored by REC. NWS will continue to send severe weather warnings but will discontinue sending other advisories such as watches, advisories, bulletins and statements.
This reduction was due to some issues that NWS encountered where some severe weather warnings were not delivered to WEA and therefore did not appear on wireless phones.
As a result, you will see a significant reduction of alert messages shown in myLPFM and in the REC CAP Viewer tool.
For now, the CAP Viewer and myLPFM will continue to display:
- IPAWS alerts originated by state, county and local authorities, including AMBER and Silver Alerts.
- Required Weekly and Monthly Tests.
- Wireless Emergency Alerts.
- National Weather Service severe weather warnings.
The NWS does operate an alternate method of obtaining the non-severe advisories. REC will consider a development project to bring this content back into our CAP data. This will be added at a later time when resources permit.