The Next Generation of WxNotify Is Coming

I know it's been pretty quiet around here lately, but you can be rest assured there has been a lot going on in the background on the WxNotify front.

WxNotify has always had one job: get you every reasonable way to find out about severe weather before it's on top of you. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that I've started to spend a good amount of time designing a complete rebuild of WxNotify from the ground up. It's not a facelift, but a full rethink of what this service could be with everything I've learned since the initial version launched. I'm excited enough about where it's headed that I didn't want to wait for a big launch-day reveal to start talking about it.

First, the important part: nothing about your alerts is changing today. The WxNotify you're using right now keeps running exactly as it does now, and I'll keep posting updates here as the next generation gets closer to real. In the meantime, here's a look at some of what's coming.

But first, a quick note about the redesign. While it is true that I will be using AI to help build and design this next generation of WxNotify, I want everyone to know that an extreme amount of thought and planning is going into this. That should hopefully calm any worries that this will be some kind of vibe-coded slop.

More ways to get alerted than anywhere else

The core idea behind next-gen is that "how you get alerted" shouldn't be a short, fixed list. Under the hood, WxNotify is being rebuilt around a notification engine that can already speak to well over a hundred different services; email, SMS and voice calls, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Pushover, smart-home integrations, custom webhooks for the tinkerers, and more, with new destinations added over time as they become available. Alongside that, a new browser push option means you can get real system-level alert notifications with no app to install and no account to create, just a one-time "allow notifications" prompt. The goal is simple: however you actually want to hear from WxNotify, there should be a way to make that happen.

Your location, however it moves

Right now, most weather apps make you pick one way to define "your location" and live with it. Next-gen lets you choose per-alert: follow every warning of a certain type issued anywhere in the country if you're a storm chaser or enthusiast, watch a specific address or zone precisely, follow everything a particular forecast office issues, or match against the exact warned area down to the polygon. And your location doesn't have to sit still as moving locations, tracked live, are part of the design too, not an afterthought bolted on later.

Run it yourself, or take it with you

Two big additions for two different kinds of WxNotify users. If you're the type who'd rather run your own copy of a service than subscribe to someone else's, next-gen's core is being built to be fully self-hostable, so you can run your own instance with full control over it. And for everyone else, dedicated iOS and Android apps are also coming. True native apps, not a website wrapped in a shell, with location tracking built in from day one.

Alerts that think ahead and tell you when something's wrong

A few more advanced features are being developed based on real-world situations and requests from subscribers. "Heads Up" alerts will warn you before a storm's path actually reaches you, based on where it's headed, instead of only once it arrives. The dashboard and your alerts will be available in Spanish, not just English. And on the reliability side, a common question I hear is "how do I know this is even still working?" Next-gen continues opt-in monthly test messages, but adds a self-service tool that lets you check exactly why a past alert may not have reached you, and an automatic heads-up if one of your notification channels starts failing, before it costs you a real alert.

What's next

There's no firm launch date yet, and I'd rather take the time to get this right than rush it out. This is a life-safety product, not just an app update. I'll keep sharing more here as pieces come together. If there's a feature above you're especially excited about, or one you think is missing, I'd love to hear about it.

More coming soon!