How to activate your Live Storm and Heavy Rain Alerts

Nicole Dolezalova

⚠️ Live Storm & Rain Alerts Now on Windy

We’ve launched real-time alerts for storms and rain so you can stay informed the moment weather conditions change.
These brand-new features by Windy are here to help you stay safe from storms and dry through all seasons – wherever you are.

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🌩️ Live Storm Alerts
Our storm alerts are a unique, location-based safety feature. You will be notified if the storm is less than 1 hour from you and lightning occurs.
Notifications are powered by privately aggregated data from renowned companies focusing on lightning occurrence, including detailed cloud-to-ground lightning detection.

To avoid false alarms, our system employs an enhanced filter: alerts are only triggered if at least two lightning strikes occur within a 2.5 km radius over a 15-minute period. If that condition is met, and the storm is less than one hour away from your location, you’ll get notified.

☔️ Live Heavy Rain Alerts
Using real-time radar data from your location, Windy.com detects short-term precipitation trends and notifies you just before the rain begins.
The Heavy Rain notifications utilize 1-hour extrapolated radar data, with a set threshold in dBZ, to determine whether the Rain is heavy or not.

This Live Alert is only available in regions covered by radars shared within Windy's network. Check the radar coverage of your location in the radar layer.

ℹ️ How to Enable Live Alerts

Open Windy.com
Go to "Menu" (Red circle with 3 horizontal lines)
Go to 🔔 "My Alerts" (Top-Right Menu)
Click on the toggle switch to activate Alerts

"Storms" for Storm Live Alerts,
"Heavy rain" for Live Rain Alerts.

You have successfully activated Live Alerts

Live Alerts are available only on mobile devices. To receive them, make sure you're online, logged in, and have location permissions enabled.

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Alerts you are familiar with

📡Official Weather Warnings
If you have opened Windy.com before, you might have seen various Weather Warnings - from Thunderstorms to Wildfires.

These are official warnings released by local hydrometeorological institutes around the world. Together with our Live Alerts you can keep safe no matter if you are commuting or enjoying your holidays.

They now appear 📍 pinned to your homepage and directly in the forecast detail. But if you are curious about all the Weather Warnings around the world, simply change your layer to Weather warnings.

🙋🏻Forecast Alerts
Do you want more specific Alert?
Windy allows you to create your personalized alert next to our Live Alerts.

You can customize the location, weather conditions, and even the duration of those conditions.

Choose from parameters such as:

Temperature
Wind (speed and direction)
Rain (accumulation)
Cloud cover
Snowfall
Your preferred forecast model

You can also personalize the notification text to suit your needs.

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Windy allows you to create multiple Forecast Alerts, keeping you safe and informed—whatever the occasion.

How to create your Forecast Alert

Choose your favorite spot by clicking on the map (or use the search bar instead)
Click on "the heart icon" (Top-Right on Mobile, Top-Left on Desktop)
Choose "Alert for this spot"
Customize your Alert (Location > Activity > Conditions > Customization)
Agree with the conditions and click "Save"
You have created the Forecast Alert

To receive Forecast Alerts, make sure you're online and logged in.
To see the instructions, just follow the same path as for Live Alerts: go from "Menu" to "My Alerts" section.
You will find them below the Live Alerts.

Joly

Hi,

When trying to activate Storm and Rain alerts on my Android smartphone, I receive the following error:

StormTracker Error: No device token available for notifications

What does this exactly mean?

MarkNagy

@Joly Hi. This means that notification library did not create the token which is necessary for this functionality. We are planning to release a hotfix for this issue, however as a temporary solution you might try to reinstall the application. This mostly solves the issue. Let me know if the issue persists. Thanks :)

Adrian Nowak

The Heavy Rain notifications utilize 1-hour extrapolated radar data, with a set threshold in dBZ, to determine whether the Rain is heavy or not

It's raining right now at my current location - I didn't get any notification before, even though radar clearly showed it. That's probably related to the "threshold" that is hardcoded somewhere. It would be cool to be able to modify it - to know about any rain coming my way.

Nicole Dolezalova

@Adrian-Nowak Hello, the Forecast Alerts allow you to have notifications about probable forecasted rain in a 3-hour window where you can set a very low threshold, which can currently satisfy your needs. In the meantime, stay tuned for future updates 8-) Niki