Earth Alerts
Description
South Wind Technologies created Earth Alerts as a free Windows application that monitors natural disasters and severe weather events occurring anywhere in the world. The program runs quietly in the background and alerts the user whenever something significant happens — an earthquake, a hurricane making landfall, a volcano erupting or a wildfire spreading. Users do not have to keep looking at the screen; Earth Alerts sits in the Windows system tray and sends a pop-up notification with sound when something worth knowing about happens.
The application draws its information directly from official government and scientific organizations. Sources include the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for earthquakes, the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for weather and tsunamis, and the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program for volcano activity. Because the data is from these agencies and not from third-party news sites, the reports are based on the same information that emergency services use.
WHAT IT MONITORS
Earth Alerts covers a wide range of natural hazards categories. Users select which ones they want to track, so the program only sends alerts for events that they actually care about.
Earthquakes appear with the magnitude on the Richter scale, depth, and exact location coordinates. The program reports all the seismic activity from minor tremors to major quakes, depending on the threshold the user sets. Tsunamis are directly related to warnings and watches issued by NOAA’s Pacific and Atlantic tsunami warning centers.
For volcanic activity, Earth Alerts provides reports on eruptions and increased levels of activity at volcanoes around the world, based on the weekly volcanic activity reports from the Smithsonian Institution. Tropical cyclones — called hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons in the Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean — appear with their current category, wind speed and projected path. Wildfires display active fire locations with perimeter data where available. Landslides, severe weather warnings including tornado and flash flood watches and local weather forecasts complete the list of event categories.
LOCATIONS AND FILTERING
Users add locations they want to watch — their home city, a region they travel to frequently, or any area they want to keep an eye on. Earth Alerts targets its alerts to events of interest to those chosen locations, so users in a non-hurricane area do not receive constant updates on tropical storms. The program also supports global monitoring for users who are interested in tracking all events around the world no matter where they are.
Each hazard category has its own sensitivity settings. For earthquakes, users specify a minimum magnitude so that small tremors do not cause constant notifications in seismically active regions. Tropical cyclone tracking can be targeted to particular ocean basins. Adjusting these thresholds requires only a few clicks within the settings panel on the left side of the interface.
REPORTS, MAPS, AND IMAGERY
When an alert fires, Earth Alerts opens a report window with information about the event. Earthquake reports contain magnitude, depth, distance from the user’s chosen location, and a link to the full USGS event page. Storm reports contain the latest position, wind speed, pressure and forecast track. Volcano reports summarize the current alert level issued by the reporting observatory.
The application displays events on maps and pulls satellite imagery where available, giving a visual picture of an ongoing event — a storm’s position in the ocean, a wildfire’s spread across a hillside, or the region affected by an earthquake. These visuals are from the same online data feeds as the text reports and not stored locally, so they are always up to date.
RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND
Earth Alerts is intended to get out of the way. After the user completes setup, closing the main window sends the program to the Windows system tray instead of shutting it down. From there it runs silently and checks its data feeds at regular intervals. A small tray icon indicates that the program is running. Double-clicking on the icon reopens the main interface to review recent alerts or adjust settings. Visual and audio alerts are displayed on screen whenever a new event meets the user’s criteria.
Because the program is connected to live internet feeds, it requires an active internet connection to work. The feeds are refreshed automatically and the program downloads the latest data each time it checks in.
HISTORICAL DATA
Earth Alerts keeps a history of events that it has reported, allowing users to view recent activity. This history view indicates when events occurred, their details and how they compared in scale to previous events in the same region. Researchers, students, or anyone monitoring long-term trends in a specific type of hazard can use this feature to examine trends over time.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Earth Alerts is a Windows-based application and requires the installation of Microsoft .NET Framework. The program file is small, less than 5 MB. Setting up map display requires a free Google Maps Platform API key, which users get from Google’s developer site. The API key connects the program to Google’s mapping service to display the location of the events. Without it, the basic alert and report functions still work, but the interactive map view fails to load. Earth Alerts is free to download and use without any subscription or registration.
