San Antonio warned of ‘destructive’ thunderstorms with new warning system

Destructive thunderstorms? Cool, cool.

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National Weather Service announced they will begin rolling out their new thunderstorm warning feature. 

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You might want to consider turning on your government alerts on your phone. 

Starting July 28, the National Weather Service will add new “damage threat” tags to severe thunderstorm warnings.

“If the NWS office attaches a ‘destructive’ tag onto the Severe Thunderstorm Warning, then this tag will automatically activate a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) on smartphones within the warned area,” NWS says. 

They go on to say that the “destructive” tag will be used “with hail threats that are 2.75 inches or larger (baseball size hail or larger) and/or wind threats of 80 mph or higher.”

The moves comes after we saw several of these high-end severe storms this spring in our area, one of which produced the largest hailstone in Texas history.

“While all severe storms pose a significant threat to life and property, this activation of WEA, for the most severe of storms,  will add an extra amount of awareness to citizens that a destructive storm will be affecting their area and urgent action is needed,” NWS says.

To receive these potentially life-saving alerts, go to the settings menu on your phone. Smart phones have the alerts turned on by default, but the NWS says many phone owners turn them off. 

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