Active US weather alerts by state

States with active alerts

• Indiana 55
• Kentucky 21
• Colorado 16
• Nevada 16
• Idaho 15
• Arizona 14
• Washington 14
• Kansas 13
• Oklahoma 13
• Texas 13
• Hawaii 12
• Illinois 12
• Iowa 12
• Oregon 12
• Georgia 11
• Missouri 11
• South Carolina 11
• Florida 9
• California 8
• North Carolina 8
• Arkansas 7
• Mississippi 7
• Alaska 6
• Tennessee 6
• Alabama 5
• Louisiana 4
• Montana 4
• Ohio 4
• Utah 4
• New Mexico 3
• Wyoming 3
• Maryland 1
• Nebraska 1
• New York 1
• Puerto Rico 1
• Virginia 1
• US Virgin Islands 1
• West Virginia 1

All states and territories

• Connecticut 0
• Delaware 0
• District of Columbia 0
• Maine 0
• Massachusetts 0
• Michigan 0
• Minnesota 0
• New Hampshire 0
• New Jersey 0
• North Dakota 0
• Pennsylvania 0
• Rhode Island 0
• South Dakota 0
• Vermont 0
• Wisconsin 0

Watch, warning, advisory: what the words mean

Every NWS alert name is built from a hazard and a level. Learning the four levels is most of the work, because they carry the instruction.

Watch

Conditions are favorable for dangerous weather, but it has not formed yet. A watch is usually issued hours ahead and covers a wide area — often dozens of counties or an entire state.

What to do: Review your plan and keep a way to receive warnings. You do not need to take shelter during a watch.

Warning

The hazard is happening now, or is imminent and expected. Warnings cover small, specific areas — a Tornado Warning may apply to a polygon a few miles across, drawn around the storm itself rather than around county lines.

What to do: Act immediately. This is the level where the alert is telling you to move, not to prepare.

Advisory

Conditions are expected that will cause significant inconvenience and could become hazardous if you are careless, but that fall short of warning criteria.

What to do: Adjust your plans. A Dense Fog Advisory or a Winter Weather Advisory usually means the drive will be worse than you expect.

Statement

Informational text. A Special Weather Statement flags weather that is notable but below advisory criteria — a strong storm with gusty wind and small hail, for example. Statements are also used to follow up on and cancel earlier alerts.

What to do: Read it for context. No action is implied.

Alerts also carry a machine-readable severity from the Common Alerting Protocol: Extreme, Severe, Moderate or Minor. That field is what this page sorts by, so the most serious products appear first. Severity is set by the alert type, not by how close the storm is to you — a Tornado Warning three counties away still reads as Extreme.

Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms

A Severe Thunderstorm Warning means a storm is producing hail one inch across — quarter-sized — or wind gusts of at least 58 mph. Both of those thresholds do real damage: 58 mph snaps branches and takes down power lines, and one-inch hail dents cars and cracks windshields.

A Tornado Warning means a tornado has been spotted or radar shows rotation consistent with one forming. The instruction is always the same and it is not negotiable: get to the lowest floor, into an interior room with no windows, and put as many walls between you and the outside as you can. Mobile homes offer no protection in any tornado, which is why the text tells residents to leave for a sturdy building.

Two phrases in the warning text raise the stakes further. "Radar indicated" means the signature is on radar; "observed" or "confirmed" means a spotter or law enforcement is watching it. A PDS warning, short for Particularly Dangerous Situation, is reserved for strong, long-track tornadoes and is rare enough that it should end any hesitation.

Flooding, the quiet killer

Flooding kills more Americans in a typical year than tornadoes and hurricane winds combined, and almost always in a vehicle. A Flash Flood Warning means water is rising fast, usually within six hours of the rain that caused it, and it is the product most often ignored because the sky may already be clearing where you are standing.

A Flash Flood Emergency is the rarest and most severe flood product. The NWS reserves it for catastrophic, life-threatening flooding already happening with confirmed reports of water rescues or structures being swept away. If you see that phrase for your area, the situation is as bad as the Weather Service ever says it is.

Six inches of moving water is enough to knock an adult off their feet, and a foot will float most passenger cars. Two feet carries away pickups and SUVs. That is the entire reasoning behind the campaign slogan the NWS puts in nearly every flood warning: turn around, do not drown.

Winter weather

A Winter Storm Warning covers heavy snow, sleet or ice expected to make travel dangerous. The snow totals that trigger it vary enormously by region, and sensibly so: two inches shuts down Atlanta, while Buffalo needs a foot before the same product goes out. A Blizzard Warning is not about snow amount at all — it requires sustained wind or frequent gusts of 35 mph or more with falling or blowing snow reducing visibility to a quarter mile for at least three hours.

An Ice Storm Warning is the one to respect most. A quarter inch of accumulated glaze is enough to bring down tree limbs and power lines, and half an inch can leave a region without electricity for a week in freezing temperatures.

The cold products were renamed in 2024. What used to be a Wind Chill Warning is now an Extreme Cold Warning, and the Wind Chill Advisory became a Cold Weather Advisory. The change was made because the old names implied wind was required, and dangerous cold does not need any wind at all to injure people.

Heat

Heat is the deadliest weather hazard in the United States in an average year, ahead of floods, tornadoes and hurricanes. An Extreme Heat Warning means dangerous heat is happening or imminent; an Extreme Heat Watch means it is likely in the coming days; and a Heat Advisory covers heat that is serious but below warning criteria.

The thresholds are set locally rather than nationally, and that is the point. A stretch of 100 °F days is a normal week in Phoenix and a public health emergency in Seattle, where far fewer homes have air conditioning. Forecast offices set criteria against what the local population is actually acclimated to and equipped for.

Heat alerts are usually driven by the heat index rather than the raw air temperature, because humidity is what stops sweat from evaporating and shuts down the body's only real cooling mechanism. Our heat index calculator shows how much difference the humidity makes at any temperature.

Tropical systems

The Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, and the eastern Pacific season from May 15 to November 30. A Hurricane Warning means sustained winds of 74 mph or higher are expected somewhere in the warned area, and it is normally issued about 36 hours before the wind arrives — deliberately early, because that is roughly how long an evacuation takes.

Storm Surge Watches and Warnings are issued separately from the wind products, and that separation exists for a reason. Surge is the leading cause of death in US landfalling hurricanes, and it does not track neatly with a storm's category. A large, slow Category 1 can push more water inland than a compact Category 3, which is why the Saffir-Simpson scale dropped surge from its definitions in 2010.

Wind, fire and fog

A High Wind Warning generally means sustained wind of 40 mph or gusts to 58 mph. On the plains and in mountain passes this is routine; it still overturns high-profile vehicles and takes down power lines.

A Red Flag Warning is a fire weather product, issued when low humidity, strong wind and dry fuels combine so that any ignition is likely to spread fast. It is not a warning that a fire exists — it is a warning that one would be very hard to stop. In California it often accompanies Santa Ana or Diablo wind events, and increasingly comes alongside utility power shutoffs.

A Dense Fog Advisory means visibility is down to a quarter mile or less. It sounds mild next to a tornado warning, and yet fog contributes to multi-vehicle pileups every year, because drivers keep highway speeds in conditions where they cannot see far enough to stop.

How to actually receive these alerts

A website is the wrong last line of defense for a tornado at 3 a.m. Wireless Emergency Alerts reach any modern cell phone for the most dangerous products — Tornado Warnings, Flash Flood Warnings, Hurricane Warnings — with no app and no subscription, and they work even when the network is congested. Check that you have not switched them off in your phone settings.

A NOAA Weather Radio with the alert tone still has one advantage nothing else matches: it does not depend on the cell network or the power grid, provided you keep batteries in it. For anyone living in Tornado Alley or in a hurricane evacuation zone, that redundancy is worth the modest cost.

This page reads the same public feed those systems use, refreshed every few minutes. Treat it as a way to understand and review conditions, not as your only notification path.