Update on NWS Issuing Expired Tornado Watches and Other Messages

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I'm getting quite a few questions about the issues the National Weather Service had this morning, mostly from AccuWeather weather clients/users asking, "What are you talking about?" since our clients never saw the false tornado watches.

With thanks to Facebook and Chris Novy, this is what the problem looked like for many users:

Twitter sent out hundreds or thousands of incorrect messages:

The Weather Channel's system displayed the incorrect information (I don't know if their users received them on their smartphones):
Via Capital Weather Gang
AccuWeather's clients did not receive these false messages because we have filters in our software that recognized they were incorrect messages and so didn't send them out. Of course, our SkyGuard® clients get warnings created by AccuWeather meteorologists rather than the NWS and so would not be affected under any conditions. 

Today's events are the latest in what is becoming a long list of major National Weather Service failures. I covered this issue, in depth, on the blog last week. That posting, with links to numerous stories in the national media, is here. 

As others have already pointed out, a failure like this during a tornado outbreak, hurricane or other major weather event could literally cost lives and huge damage. I will continue to update readers on this and related issues. 

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