It hasn’t been long since a false incoming ballistic missile threat alert was sent out to residents of Hawaii causing panic in the state for about half an hour. A clarification was eventually issued and a subsequent investigation by the FCC revealed the cause behind the goof up. While it wasn’t a similar goof up today, a false tsunami warning put people on edge all across the country, because at least one major third-party weather app pushed it out as a genuine alert in several states.
Popular weather app AccuWeather reportedly pushed out the tsunami warning in Texas, DC, and New York states. While the National Weather Service did send out a tsunami warning to an unconfirmed number of people around 8:30 am today, it may not have been immediately obvious to some that it was marked as a test.
The fine print of the warning issued by the National Weather Service clearly stated that the message was meant for test purposes only to determine the transmission times involved in the dissemination of tsunami information.
Local NWS Twitter accounts have since been trying to eliminate the confusion surrounding the alert. Even AccuWeather has said now that the warning was a test but it didn’t explain why its app had pushed it out as a genuine alert earlier today. Hopefully, an explanation about this episode will be offered sooner rather than later.
Filed in . Read more about Apps.