NSWWS online registration - frequently asked questions

The National Severe Weather Warning Service (NSWWS) is produced by the Met Office as a part of our commitment to the Public Weather Service. This requirement is defined in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. The warnings are required for two purposes.

1: To enable civil emergency authorities and the MOD to trigger their plans to protect the public from impacts in advance of an event and to help them recover from any impacts after the event;
2: To alert the public to think in advance of high impact weather about actions they may need to take to stay safe.

A guide to severe weather warnings is available online.

Advisories are issued at 11:00 daily as routine onto the Met Office website (only) and indicate an expectation of risk of disruption from severe or extreme weather. Early and flash warnings supersede advisories when risk of disruption levels are 60% or greater.

An early warning of severe weather will normally be issued up to several days in advance whenever the overall risk of disruption in any UK region is 60% or greater.

Flash warnings of severe weather are issued when the risk of an event reaching specified criteria is above 80%, and should give a minimum of two hours' notice. Warnings are issued for every affected county or unitary authority.

Category 1 responders are those organisations at the core of emergency response (e.g. emergency services, local authorities).

Category 2 responders are 'co-operating bodies' who, while less likely to be involved in the heart of planning work, will be heavily involved in incidents that affect their sector (e.g. Health and Safety Executive, transport and utility companies).

See the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 for more details.

Yes, but each request would be considered individually by the Met Office and may require a commercial contract. Please contact us for more details.

Details can only be updated by the Primary Contact or Secondary Contact. Recipient details can be updated as often as you require. Any changes made prior to 10:00 will be synchronised with our central database by 17:00 on the same day. Any changes made after 10:00 will not update our central database until 17:00 on the following day.

Severe weather warnings are issued in accordance with delivery details held within this central database. This means that the changes you make will not be effective immediately, but should be available the following day.

We request that, wherever possible, you make changes during normal working hours. This will assist in ensuring the support of the service is maintained to the highest level. We do recommend that you check that the details we hold on a regular basis (e.g. monthly).

Yes. Once your Primary Contact has logged on to the online registration system they should go to the page titled 'View and edit Recipient Details', select the recipient to be updated, and change the details as required. This will not have any impact on other recipients.

To stop delivery to an individual recipient your Primary Contact must log on to the online registration system, select the option 'View and Edit Recipient Details', select the appropriate recipient, and delete their requirements using the 'delete' option.

To cancel the service completely and remove your organisation from our database please contact us.

No, the Primary Contact is the lead person in your organisation only - they administer the service on behalf of your organisation. The Met Office will contact them if there are any problems with the delivery of your warnings. They are also the person responsible for ensuring details relevant to your organisation are kept up to date.

No, the Secondary Contact is contacted only in the event that the Primary Contact is unavailable (see Q5).

Yes, your Primary Contact is able to enter your specific requirements.

Your Primary Contact should log on to the online registration system and go to the page entitled 'View and Edit Recipient Details' and update your details/requirements as necessary.

Please contact your email system administrator and ask that they set any spam filters to allow email messages with the following attributes.

Display names:
SMTP Gateway - Met Office, Exeter Ops Centre (System A) or
SMTP Gateway - Met Office, Exeter Ops Centre (System B)

email from: addresses:
nimbusautoexa@metoffice.gov.uk or
nimbusautoexb@metoffice.gov.uk

email subjects:
NSWWS Flash Warning, or
NSWWS Early Warning

There is no restriction on the number of UK Regions that you can receive weather warnings for. However, please bear in mind that the more regions you request the more warnings you will receive, some of which may not be relevant.

Severe Weather Warnings should only be sent to email addresses that are recognised as belonging to organisations that are authorised recipients of NSWWS. All Primary Contacts are encouraged to use a single generic email address for the receipt of severe weather warnings. Distribution within your organisation should then be managed internally, e.g. through auto forwarding.

The Met Office recognises their responsibility to deliver severe weather warnings to appropriate response organisations, however, we consider the distribution of these warnings within each organisation to be the responsibility of the organisation itself.

At present we only allow 12 recipients per organisation, but this may be reviewed in the future.

Please contact us.

Please contact us.

You should contact your Primary Contact. They will be able to log on and go to the page entitled 'National Severe Weather Warning Service: Recipient'. From here they will be able to view your preferences.

If you look at the Met Office website you will be able to view all current Severe Weather Warnings.

Please contact us.