Dust Storm Season Means Noisy Smartphones
Every year around this time, monsoon storms roll across the Southwest. They create dust clouds and flash floods of Biblical proportions. But it's the 21st Century, so the way we hear about those storms is changing.
For some the incessant, automatic smartphone warnings have gotten downright annoying.
Jonathan Carroll, a Phoenix coffee shop owner, first heard it a few weeks ago. He was asleep. He thinks it was around 8 a.m., when all of a sudden it sounded like his phone was “basically having a seizure.”
Carroll said his smartphone, a Droid Razr, was making a sound that harkened back to the days of old-fashioned alarm clocks.
“It would just make that ‘EEEEH EEEEH EEEEH’ sound. Well, it was like a vibration of that,” Carroll said.
He’d never heard his phone sound anything like it.
“And so I think, 'Oh, this must be something important.' And I look down and it is like, ‘Dust storm warning.’”
Not quite the catastrophe he was expecting.
“And I’m like, 'Why am I getting this?'”
Not because he signed up for it.
His phone was transmitting a Wireless Emergency Alert, a program of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission.
The newest smartphones receive the alerts automatically.
There are three kinds: Amber alerts, imminent threats — which include warnings from the National Weather Service — and alerts from the president.
Alerts are confined to certain geographic areas, so if your phone is within range of a targeted cell tower, you’ll be getting a message.
Susan Buchanan of the National Weather Service said the idea is to get people emergency information when they are on the move.
“The more time people have to get information,” Buchanan said. “The more time they have to get to safety, so these wireless emergency alerts really could save your life one day.”
Buchanan said earlier this month in Connecticut, campers and counselors were in a sports complex covered by a dome when a tornado was headed right for them.
“The manager received a wireless alert and ushered everyone to safety. And the dome was hit two minutes after the alert.”
Here in Arizona tornadoes aren’t too common.
But in the past year statewide, there were a whopping 264 warnings for flash floods. And earlier this month between July 1 and July 18, there were 10 dust storm alerts.
One of those dust storm alerts happened to come at an awkward moment. Right when the city council in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale was discussing the fate of its professional hockey team, the Phoenix Coyotes.
As the public weighed in on the team’s future, several phones in the room went off, causing Mayor Jerry Weiers some consternation.
“Please turn that off,” Weiers told the room.
When Weiers was told it was a dust storm warning, he quipped back:
“Sit on it or something, I don’t know. It is not fair to people speaking when those things go off.”
Wireless Emergency Alerts began more a year ago, but many of us are getting them for the first time this storm season because our smartphones are getting smarter.
“When this rolled out, there was maybe ten devices that were compatible with the wireless emergency alerts, but today we offer over 50 devices,” said Jenny Weaver, a spokesperson for Verizon.
The list is growing, and varies by cell phone service provider.
Just last month, newer iPhones on AT&T started getting the alerts for the first time.
The phone companies say the alerts are completely free. And no, they actually aren’t mandatory.
“If customers decide they want to opt out, that is definitely a possibility,” Weaver said.
Except presidential alerts. No one can opt out of those.
