PUSH ALERTS WARNING people about high winds, heavy rain and extreme weather events will soon be available on smartphones under a new project by Met Éireann.  

The national forecaster will be launching a new warning notification service to send weather alerts by push notification, text or email.

This feature should be available next month, but no exact date has been given as yet. 

Met Éireann usually announces its list of winter storm names in early September.

The first named storm of the season, Storm Ali, arrived early last year on 19 September – causing widespread power outages and prompting the National Ploughing Championships to cancel its Wednesday events. 

Under Met Éireann’s new plan, the public will be able to sign up for email alerts through the services website and for push notifications through the app. 

“When the app is updated, people will get an alert asking if they want to sign up to the push notifications,” Evelyn Cusack, Head of Forecasting at Met Éireann, told TheJournal.ie.

People can choose to receive alerts by county or by type of alert (such as wind or rain). There will also be an option to only receive more serious weather warnings. 

Under its current system Met Éireann posts colour coded weather warnings – ranging from yellow (for the least serious advisories) to red (for severe weather alerts) on its website and social media channels. 

Cusack said the phone and email alerts will be free. There may be a charge for the texts, if received while outside Ireland. 

This new service has been under test for a number of months. 

People with the Met Éireann app on Android may have received a ‘test’ notification last Friday at 2.46pm. The forecaster said this was part of their testing of the notification service and was sent by mistake. 

“That shouldn’t have gone out, but at least now people have got a taste of what’s to come,” said Cusack. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, which encompasses the weather service, said the new alerts system will be very customisable. 

“The aim is to make it as easy as possible for people to be made aware of a weather warning that may affect them and to act on any advice that may accompany that warning,” said the spokesperson.