With all the crazy recent Kansas City weather we’ve had, wouldn’t it be nice to get telephone or email notification of nearby severe weather? The National Weather Service has changed the way we are all notified when there is dangerous weather nearby.

Warnings used to be issued based on county boundaries, but now they have created a more precise method of sending out these warnings – called Storm-based Warnings. These reduce the size of the warning area by about 75 percent and alleviate worry by people who are not within several hundred miles of the storm’s path, but happen to be in the same county.

I recently found out about a great service offered by KMBC Channel 9. It’s called First Alert WeatherCall that sends a storm-based warning from Chief Meteorologist Bryan Busby straight to your phone when your location is within the warning area. You pay $9.95 per year and have access to tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, and flash flood warnings. For this low fee, you can register one address and up to 3 telephone numbers and 3 email addresses to receive the message.

Protect yourself and your precious belongings!