Floods and Earthquakes! Are You Ready?

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Completely redesigned application interface, making the display of alerts and information more colorful and easier to read. Design change also allows for quicker navigation between screens...
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A Rough Start With Earth Alerts

I've found yet another program that auto installs itself on my computer without asking me where to put it. That really is starting to bother me. How hard is it to give the users a say in where they want to install their own software? Come on people, it's really not that difficult. Yes, it's a pet peeve of mine, but it's also a hassle to users who want to have a clean and organized system.

With that aside, I'll get started. Earth Alerts is one of the more intriguing programs I've had the pleasure of testing. I think that this would probably be a geologist's dream come true. Earth Alerts is a program that alerts you when any sort of phenomenon occurs. I think that my U.W. geology professors Terry Swanson and Stan Chernicoff both have this on their PC's, but that's just an assumption.

What's Inside

You start off Earth Alerts by inputting a location and working from there. Navigating the system wasn't too confusing, but it was a bit awkward at the start since you're supposed to enable the auto-updating service in order to receive information. Unless you want to do everything manually, I'd suggest you use the auto-update feature.

In the settings menu, you have a few tabs to work with. The first part of 'Settings' has to do with the actual Application, you can set options for application startup, and some general Earth Alert formatting. You're even able to adjust the automatic update time. In the Retrieve part of the settings tab, you can set your preferences to select which products to search for and retrieve during the update process. All Weather alerts and Forecast information is retrieved from the National Weather Service. The earthquake and volcano information is retrieved from the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Notify - Visual & Sounds is pretty self explanatory. It's where you set the audio and visual options to select how you'll get notified when anything happens.

I thought that a cool part of the program was the fact that you could not only get notifications on your computer, but it's also possible to receive the same notifications on your email or mobile phone. For your phone, all you need to do is select the carrier, your number and the alert types (major earthquakes, major volcano alerts, or both).

Overall, you're given quite an array of options when viewing your alerts. You have Weather Alerts, Weather Forecasts, Weather Images, Earthquakes, and Volcanos.

It gets better

As I set my location (Seattle, WA) I already received two big weather alerts; a Flood Watch and a Flood Statement from the NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE - SEATTLE, WA. My Weather Forecaster showed me a 7 day forecast that pretty much included rain. I liked the fact that it had a Forecast Discussion which gives me a little update of what's going on throughout the week.

The Weather Images show me a picture of the Pacific Northwest with Flood Statements, Flood Watches, Short Term Forecasts, Snow advisories, Hazardous Weather Outlook Small Craft Advisories and more. In the same time you're able to switch to a Local Radar that shows you more specific things. The Regional Radar gives you the same thing, but with a broader range. The Satellite imagery is a bit blocky and hard to understand.

There weren't any earthquakes in Washington State when I took a look at my Earthquake view, but I did notice a magnitude 1.5 earthquake in Southern California. The window fills me in on the DATE & TIME, MAGNITUDE, EPICENTER LOCATION, DEPTH, REGION, NEARBY LOCATIONS TO EPICENTER, and DISTANCE (you can also set the magnitude you want Earth Alert to detect).

The last thing I noticed was my Volcano view. For every location I entered (Washington and California) I received "Alert Level 2" Mt. St. Helens volcano warnings. Earth Alerts also described exactly what was going on with the actual volcano (ex. Growth of the new lava dome inside the crater of Mount St. Helens continues, accompanied by low rates of seismicity, low emissions of steam and volcanic gases, and minor production of ash?) It also adds potential ash hazards and aviation ash hazards.

The program receives some help from outside groups. The NWS (National Weather Service), this is where they receive their weather alerts and forecast information. Weather Underground supplies Earth Alerts with radar and satellite images and finally the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) supplies it with earthquake and volcano information.

All in all, Earth Alerts is a Windows-based application that provides alert notifications and information on all natural events currently happening anywhere in the United States (including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

The Good

This is a great geological guide to what's going on around your home. You're able to get email and mobile phone alerts at the sign of any major phenomenon. You get great and accurate weather alerts, along with forecasts, radar, satellite and images of what's going on. It's easy to use and functional.

The Bad

Mostly U.S. based, it would be great if this expanded to fit the entire globe. This tool would be great to implement in some other countries since it could potentially avoid certain tragedies. If this technology could be used to avoid another tidal wave or something of that magnitude, it could be a life saver.

The Truth

This is one of those programs that has a scope and a focus. The only thing I wish it could expand on is the amount of geography it covered. If this was a worldwide utility, it would be even better. That's far from saying that one can't use this application with what it has right now. This is a great combination of useful utilities and practical information into a great interface. Did I also mention that this is free? Get this if you're a big geology fan or if you just want an accurate description of tomorrow's weather, whatever you use it for, it's bound to be informative and correct.

Check out the screenshots below.

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user interface 4
features 4
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 

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