National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Severe Thunderstorms and Excessive Rainfall in the Central U.S.; Heat Building in the Western U.S.

A cold front pressing east across the central U.S. will be the focus for areas of strong to severe thunderstorms and excessive rainfall through this weekend. Strong to severe thunderstorms my bring damaging winds, hail, and a few tornadoes while excessive rainfall may lead to areas of flooding. Heat will build across the western U.S. with heat-related watches, warnings, and advisories issued. Read More >

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) on Wednesday Oct 3, 2018. This test will simulate a Presidential Alert message. The National Weather Service in Seattle will participate in the EAS portion of this test, relaying the National Periodic Test (NPT) message across the NOAA Weather Radio network in Western Washington. Please note that NOAA Weather Radios with Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) receiving capabilities that are set up to alert for NPT messages will alarm for this test as will tone-alert radios.

  • The WEA portion of this test will commence at 11:18 AM PDT.
  • The EAS portion of this test will commence at 11:20 AM PDT.

For more detailed information on this national test, please visit: https://www.fema.gov/Emergency-Alert-Test