Storm Shield

Storm Shield is a fantastic weather alert app, but it is missing support for the Critical Alerts feature. First, Storm Shield provides more precise alerts than other apps, so I don’t get alerts about warnings for storms on the far side of my county and headed away from me. Second, the voice alerts actually speak the alert, so you know without having to look at your phone what the alert is for (e.g., flash flood watch vs tornado warning). The only thing missing is support for Critical Alerts, which allows notifications to break through even when a Focus mode is turned on. Ideally, I would be able to pick for each alert type whether the notification is a Critical Alert or not. (The Red Cross Emergency app let’s me do this.) That way I can decide which alerts break through and wake me up at night when the Sleep focus mode is on (e.g., Tornado Warning but not Severe Thunderstorm Warning).

I have loved this app for a little over 2 years now I believe. So much so that when our friends from California moved here to Tennessee with no experience in severe weather and were nervous about the weather, I recommended it to them to keep them up to date on watches and warnings and give them a heads up if there was a tornado warning in the middle of the night to get to the basement. Got us all set up with locations picked, alerts turned on and everything and felt good about it, until last night when tornadoes went through the area and there was not ONE alert that popped up for any of us other than the tornado watch that came through like 3 hours after it was issued. We never got any alert for the severe thunderstorm warning or the special weather statement that came and went. And thank the good Lord the radar still worked because I had to watch it all night and just happened to notice the red box pop up when the tornado warning was issued right over their location, and was able to call and tell them to get them and their kids downstairs in time for their area to get hit. People’s roofs were ripped off within a mile or two of their home and they would have had no idea they were even in danger if they’d just trusted this app:( makes me sad because it’s always worked for me and my family in the past and I trusted it too, but none of us (3-4 phones) got any alerts when it really mattered despite double and triple checking all our settings were correct.

Updating my previous review and adding a star for great customer support! Within hours, the developers responded directly to my review, noting a temporary server glitch that prevented me from adding new locations. Works now! It’s a little cumbersome on the search function and only supports U.S., but once the location is set, the swipe-between-locations feature in the main interface is easy to use. I figure the other issue re: dark vs. light background is related to the settings on each of my devices. No big deal. I may keep Storm Shield for local weather monitoring and still stick with my old standby Storm Radar for a global view and peppier radar. Intellicast was the best weather app hands-down, but since its demise, no one has been able to match it. Previously: I’m on the fence trying to decide between weather apps for my iPhone and iPad. Storm Shield is good, but on the iPad I keep getting an error message when I try to add locations. The darker radar background is preferred on the iPad, but I’ve been unable to replicate it on my iPhone. The simple interface, one click between radar and detailed forecast info, is easy to navigate — a big plus!