Weather Alert Meaning Decoder
Choose an alert type to see what it means, how urgent it is, and what actions to consider.
This tool explains common alert terms. Always follow official alerts and instructions from the National Weather Service, local emergency management, law enforcement, and other authorities.
Live conditions are tracked on the HazardNow dashboard
For current alerts, infrastructure stress, weather, wildfire, travel, public-health, supply-chain, and stability indicators, open the live dashboard.
Watch vs Warning vs Advisory
- Watch: Be prepared; conditions favorable or possible.
- Warning: Take action; hazard occurring, imminent, or likely.
- Advisory: Use caution; less severe than warning but still disruptive.
More HazardNow tools
Practical planning helpers
Explore the rest of the standalone emergency planning tools. They are informational only and do not replace official alerts or instructions.
Decision Support
Action Planner
Turn a developing hazard, alert, outage, or local concern into a simple action plan: check facts, protect people, prepare supplies, communicate, and decide next steps.
Local Risk History
Historical Disasters
Explore historical FEMA disaster declarations by county with a national heatmap, trend view, and local disaster history lookup.
Household Readiness
Readiness Gap Analyzer
Find the largest household preparedness gaps across water, food, power, communications, sanitation, evacuation, medical needs, pets, and local hazards.
Emergency Food
Food System Planner
Plan emergency food by calories, no-cook backups, prep water, cooking fuel, shelf life, dietary fit, budget priorities, and pantry rotation.
Power & Household Safety
Outage Survival
Estimate outage runtime for critical household loads using batteries, generators, fuel on hand, solar charging, vehicle inverter options, and priority tiers.
Power & Household Safety
Power Outage Triage
Prioritize food safety, medical needs, temperature risk, generator safety, communications, and backup-power decisions during an outage.