Track Flood and Tornado Warnings from NWS

Flood and tornado messages demand fast handling, but keyword searches over headlines can miss distinctions between watches, warnings, statements, and cancellations. The NWS Weather Alerts Scraper uses the structured event field from the official alert record and exports the accompanying safety context.

Filter exact event names

Run notification drills with archived examples before enabling real paging. Confirm ownership, escalation, quiet hours, and duplicate suppression for each event family. An accurate feed still fails operationally when messages reach the wrong team or no one knows what response the alert should trigger.

{"areaCodes":["TX","OK","KS","MO"],"eventTypes":["Flood Warning","Flash Flood Warning","Tornado Watch","Tornado Warning"],"maxResultsPerArea":100}

Keep watches and warnings as separate event types downstream. A warning generally calls for a different action path than a watch, while flood and tornado hazards affect facilities and routes differently. Route on the official event plus urgency, severity, certainty, and timing—not on a single word in the headline.

The dataset preserves description and instruction text for responders, along with affected-area text, geocodes, and geometry for spatial matching. Facility joins should use coordinates or official zones where possible. County-name string matching alone can fail when names repeat across states or an alert covers partial counties.

Refresh frequently enough for the business need without hammering the source. Upsert by alert ID, record changes to expiry or instruction, and remove items from an active view only after they expire or a replacement message is processed. Build explicit monitoring for failed runs and stale collection times. This feed can improve notification consistency, but users must still follow official NWS and local emergency directions during dangerous weather.