Weather warning links

What are Weather warnings?

Weather warnings are issued by National Meteorological Services, or related organisations, in almost every country in the world. Because of the global nature of the industries they serve, marine and aviation warnings have been standardised. General public weather warnings, however, vary in name, nature and type from country to country, but the binding thread is that they warn of forecast hazardous or dangerous weather or weather-caused conditions.

In Australia, warnings are issued by the Bureau of Meteorology and include tropical cyclones, floods, severe thunderstorms and fire weather as well as some more specialised warnings in some states. Severe Weather Warnings are issued for any combination of gale force or stronger winds, very heavy rain/flash flooding, abnormally high tides, large surf or Alpine blizzards. The Bureau also issues marine, aviation, volcanic ash and tsunami warnings.

Bureau of Meteorology

Australia - all warnings

This page provides a constantly updated list of all land, coastal and ocean warnings that are current. (For aviation warnings, see the Aviation Links page.) 7/8/14

Weatherzone

Australia - all warnings

While Weatherzone's listing of Bureau warnings is not as comprehensive as the Bureau's, it is sorted by time of issue with the latest first. 7/8/14

Bureau of Meteorology

Australian Coastal warnings

Australian area Ocean warnings

The Bureau's coastal waters pages present current and forecast weather information as well as warnings in a tabbed format for each of the seven states and territories. 7/8/14

Click any of the four high seas areas around Australia for its warnings and forecasts. Australia is responsible for providing these for global Metarea 10 which also extends to the Antarctic coastline - see the Marine Links page. 7/8/14

MetService

New Zealand warnings

Warnings are displayed across the top of this homepage. NZ grade these into Warnings, Watches and Outlooks. Some would argue that the more detailed, probability-based warnings, often accompanied by charts, make for a better understanding of forthcoming hazardous weather by taking users into the minds of the forecasters. The MetService blogs, often linked to this page, provide quite detailed yet accessible descriptions of past severe weather events. 8/8/14

World Meteorological Organization

Severe Weather Information Centre

This WMO site gathers together warnings and information on tropical cyclones from 21 member countries. While coverage is not global, it is extensive for the Indian, Pacific and parts of the Atlantic Ocean basins. Click a cyclone, or any of the red dots representing warning issuing centres, for links to information. The site also shows global maps of observations over the past 24 hours of heavy rain/snow, thunderstorms, gales or fog. In these, click any square for a more detailed map, then click any symbol for further details. 8/8/14

Joint Typhoon Warning Center

Tropical Cyclone warnings and information in Pacific and north Indian Oceans.

JTWC is a US military site with a long reputation for providing very detailed information and warnings on current and past typhoons, hurricanes and tropical cyclones (which are all the same thing). The intended audience is shipping, primarily naval, so some information is fairly technical. 8/8/14

JCOMM (WMO)

Global ocean weather warnings

JCOMM gathers ocean/sea area warnings and forecasts from National Meteorological Services globally into this one site. They are divided into these metareas. Click the metarea in the menu for a list of warnings (peach background) and forecasts (green background). Warnings include cyclones, gales, high seas, fog and ice accretion and are sometimes embedded in the forecasts -which is noted on the area screen. The General Information (including maps) link at the bottom can be very useful. 8/8/14

meteoalarm

Europe weather warnings

This website embraces warnings from all European National Weather Services, making extensive use of colour coding and pictograms to overcome language barriers. Warnings are for today and tomorrow (European time). Click the colours or pictograms at bottom for explanation. Click a country line to bring up a country map showing areas of warning, then click the area for more detail. Click the National Weather Service emblem on a country page to go to the warnings on that Service's website. 8/8/14

National Weather Service

USA weather warnings
- by state
- by weather forecast office areas

These pages work similarly, showing colour-coded warnings across the USA, but clicking the map takes you to a different area showing active watches, warnings, advisories, short term forecasts, discussions, and more. 8/8/14

Various

Warnings for other countries

Japan: Land | Marine 8/8/14
United Kingdom: Met Office | BBC 8/8/14

Various

Experimental and unofficial

Estofex: European Storm Forecast Experiment 8/8/14