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AlertWatch World

Disclaimer

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AlertWatch World is an independent public-information project designed to make official alert information easier to discover and understand.

Please read this Disclaimer before relying on information displayed on the website.

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1. AlertWatch World does not issue official warnings

AlertWatch World is not a meteorological authority, emergency-management agency, government agency, emergency service, or warning-issuing organization.

Weather warnings displayed through AlertWatch originate from external issuing authorities such as:

The original issuing authority remains the authoritative source for its warning, instructions, updates, cancellations, and recommended actions.

AlertWatch World’s role is to collect, process, organize, and display available information from those sources.

2. Do not rely on AlertWatch as your only source during an emergency

AlertWatch World is intended primarily for general awareness and information.

It should not be your only source of information when making decisions involving:

When safety is involved, consult and follow instructions from the applicable official meteorological service, emergency-management authority, government agency, or other responsible authority.

If you are experiencing an emergency, use the appropriate emergency services for your location.

AlertWatch World is not an emergency communication service.

3. The absence of a displayed alert does not mean an area is safe

The absence of a warning or alert on AlertWatch World does not prove that:

Coverage varies by country, issuing authority, feed availability, warning format, geography, language, and technical compatibility.

Source interruptions, network problems, delayed updates, format changes, or processing failures can also cause information to be missing or delayed.

4. Alerts can change

Weather warnings are dynamic.

An issuing authority may:

There can be a delay between a change at the original source and the corresponding change appearing on AlertWatch World.

For time-sensitive information, consult the original issuing authority.

5. Publication freshness is not the same as hazard freshness

AlertWatch displays information about the age of its published dataset.

A recently generated AlertWatch publication does not mean that every warning in that publication was issued recently, has recently been reviewed by its issuing authority, remains in force, or has been independently confirmed by AlertWatch.

Conversely, a stale AlertWatch publication means that the dataset has not been successfully replaced recently enough. It does not establish that the hazards shown have ended.

AlertWatch’s current methodology begins indicating aging publication data after two hours and marks a publication stale after three hours.

6. International warning lifecycle limitations

Warning systems around the world do not all use expiry, cancellation, update, and lifecycle information in the same way.

AlertWatch currently uses WMO/SWIC warning information as part of the Worldwide publication, but it does not apply one universal expiry rule to every underlying international warning record.

Some published WMO/SWIC records may therefore contain an expiry time that precedes the AlertWatch publication time, have no usable expiry time, or remain listed because of the way the underlying source feed represents its warning lifecycle.

AlertWatch therefore describes these as published or currently listed alert records rather than asserting that every displayed international warning has been independently confirmed to represent an ongoing hazard.

7. AlertWatch does not independently verify conditions on the ground

AlertWatch performs automated structural and publication-quality checks.

Those checks are intended to identify data-processing problems. They do not independently confirm whether a storm exists, whether precipitation is occurring, whether flooding has occurred, whether a warning was meteorologically justified, whether a hazard has ended, whether conditions at a particular location are safe, or whether an official authority should issue, continue, or cancel a warning.

AlertWatch does not replace the observations, forecasting, judgment, or authority of the original warning provider.

8. Map information has limitations

The AlertWatch map is a visualization tool.

Displayed alert geometry may come from source-supplied polygons, official forecast or warning zones, combined source geometries, resolved geographic areas, or point locations.

A displayed polygon is not necessarily an exact physical footprint of the hazard.

A storm or other weather hazard may affect only part of a displayed area, extend outside a displayed area, move after the publication was generated, or affect locations differently within the same warning area.

Map boundaries, labels, and place names are provided for geographic context.

They should not be interpreted as AlertWatch World’s determination of legal, political, jurisdictional, or territorial boundaries.

9. Severity has source-specific limitations

AlertWatch uses a common display scale:

Extreme · Severe · Moderate · Minor · Unknown

The underlying sources do not all use identical severity systems.

AlertWatch therefore applies source-specific normalization rules.

In particular, some Canadian Marine warning records are displayed as Unknown because the source information does not provide a sufficiently comparable severity value for AlertWatch’s common scale.

Unknown does not mean harmless or low risk.

It means AlertWatch does not have a defensible equivalent severity value for that record.

10. Marine information requires particular care

Marine weather conditions can change rapidly and may involve significant safety risks.

AlertWatch publishes selected marine warning information where the source data and geographic representation meet its publication rules.

It does not publish every marine forecast as an alert, and some records may be withheld when AlertWatch cannot represent the affected geographic subdivision reliably.

Mariners should rely on the applicable official marine-weather and safety services when making operational decisions.

11. Waterspout classification is not an observation database

The Waterspout filter identifies records that meet AlertWatch’s reviewed classification rules.

It is not a complete database of observed waterspouts, confirmed waterspouts, all warnings containing the word “waterspout,” or all waterspout hazards worldwide.

Classification is intentionally conservative and source-specific.

A record that does not appear under the Waterspout filter may still contain related information at its original source.

12. Alert counts are not danger rankings

AlertWatch may display total alert records, Countries Reporting, Most Alerted Countries, Global Alert Activity, and similar summary information.

These values count published AlertWatch records.

They do not directly measure meteorological severity, population exposure, deaths or injuries, geographic area affected, property damage, economic loss, emergency-response level, or relative national safety.

Different issuing authorities structure warnings differently.

One authority may issue one warning for a large region while another may issue many warnings covering smaller regions.

A higher AlertWatch count therefore does not necessarily mean greater danger, and a lower count does not necessarily mean greater safety.

13. Global Alert Activity is a publication metric

The Global Alert Activity chart represents the number of records contained in successful validated AlertWatch Worldwide publications.

It does not represent the number of storms, new hazardous events, people affected, emergencies, severity of global weather, or independently confirmed ongoing hazards.

The chart is a measure of published alert-record activity within AlertWatch’s Worldwide dataset.

14. Third-party information

Much of the underlying alert information displayed by AlertWatch originates with third-party official authorities.

AlertWatch makes reasonable efforts to process that information consistently, but the underlying information can change and may contain omissions, errors, differing terminology, or other source-specific limitations.

AlertWatch does not warrant that third-party information is complete, current, accurate, or suitable for a particular decision.

15. External websites

AlertWatch World may link to official authorities, source documentation, mapping providers, software projects, or other third-party websites.

Those websites are outside AlertWatch World’s control.

AlertWatch is not responsible for their availability, content, accuracy, privacy practices, security practices, or changes made to them.

A link does not imply endorsement unless expressly stated.

16. Availability

AlertWatch World aims to provide a useful and reliable service, but continuous availability cannot be guaranteed.

The website or individual features may become unavailable because of maintenance, software defects, hosting outages, source outages, network problems, changes to external services, changes in source formats, excessive demand, or circumstances outside AlertWatch World’s control.

The service may also be changed, temporarily suspended, or discontinued.

17. No warranties

AlertWatch World is provided for informational purposes on an “as available” basis.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, AlertWatch World makes no guarantee that the website or information displayed through it will always be available, complete, current, accurate, error-free, uninterrupted, or suitable for a particular purpose.

Nothing in this Disclaimer excludes rights or obligations that cannot lawfully be excluded.

18. Limitation of reliance and responsibility

Users remain responsible for deciding how they use information obtained through AlertWatch World.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, AlertWatch World is not responsible for losses or harm resulting solely from reliance on the website when current information or instructions should reasonably have been obtained from the applicable official authority.

This limitation is especially important for time-sensitive safety, emergency, travel, marine, and severe-weather decisions.

Nothing in this section limits liability where applicable law does not permit such a limitation.

19. Corrections

AlertWatch World welcomes reports of possible problems with its own presentation, processing, classification, geographic representation, methodology, source attribution, or explanatory content.

AlertWatch may correct its own presentation when appropriate.

It cannot alter an official warning at its original source.

Questions concerning the substance of an official warning should normally be directed to the issuing authority.

20. Contact

Questions about this Disclaimer or reports of possible AlertWatch processing problems can be sent to:

AlertWatch World
alertwatchworld@gmail.com

The contact mailbox is not an emergency service and is not continuously monitored.