BloomWX Push Notifications Explained — Severe Weather Alerts to Your Device

BloomWX Push Notifications Explained — Severe Weather Alerts to Your DeviceHow BloomWX Web Push notifications work, what alert types are sent, the iPhone PWA install requirement, and how push complements NOAA Weather Radio and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA).BloomWX can send a notification to your phone or computer when NWS issues a severe-weather warning for the county you subscribed to. The notification arrives even if BloomWX isn't open — same look and feel as a text or any other app notification — and tapping it opens the live county dashboard.How it worksWeb Push is a built-in browser feature (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari 16.4+). When you subscribe, your browser hands BloomWX an opaque endpoint URL it uses to deliver pushes. BloomWX's server polls NWS every 60 seconds; when a Tornado / Severe Thunderstorm / Flash Flood Warning fires for your county, the server posts the alert to the push provider (Apple, Google, or Mozilla, depending on your browser), which delivers it to your device.What gets sentBy default, the four life-safety warnings:

Tornado Warning — active tornado threat

Tornado Emergency — confirmed catastrophic tornado

Severe Thunderstorm Warning — damaging wind / large hail imminent

Flash Flood Warning — active life-threatening flooding

A future update will let you opt into watches and lower-impact products. Today, we keep it tight to avoid notification fatigue.What it's NOTBloomWX push is a convenience layer, not a life-safety primary channel. There's a 1–2 minute upper bound on delivery latency (NWS poll interval + push-provider relay), and BloomWX's server can fail silently during outages. For the actual life-safety job, two things matter more:

NOAA Weather Radio: A SAME-capable receiver tuned to your local transmitter alerts in seconds, no internet needed. The gold standard.

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA): Government-sent broadcasts to every cell phone in a polygon. Enabled by default on most phones; verify in Settings → Notifications → Government Alerts.

BloomWX push complements those. Don't use it as your only warning channel.iPhone / iPad noteiOS Safari requires BloomWX to be installed as a Home Screen app (Share → Add to Home Screen) before push alerts can be subscribed. Open the home-screen icon, then the Subscribe button on the Feed tab will work. Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux: works directly from any browser tab.PrivacySubscribing creates no account and asks for no personal info. BloomWX stores only the opaque push endpoint your browser generates plus the county you subscribed to. No email, no name, no IP. Unsubscribe deletes the record.Part of the BloomWX learn library — beginner-friendly explainers covering every surface of the BloomWX weather dashboard. Open BloomWX to see live data for any U.S. county.