A push notification is now available on the Bureau of Meteorology’s Weather App to provide information to communities during severe weather and to help them make informed decisions.

The push notifications feature six types of weather warnings: tropical cyclone, fire weather, flood, tsunami, severe thunderstorms, and severe weather.

“We’re constantly looking to improve our services wherever possible, and we know people already use the BOM Weather app to get valuable information about rain, wind, temperature, and warnings quickly and easily,” Bureau of Meteorology general manager decision support services Sandy Whight says.

“People can now turn on push notifications for their set location and the BOM Weather app will proactively alert them when warnings are issued for those areas.”

Whight says, once installed and enabled, a notification will appear on the person’s device’s lock screen whenever a warning is issued relevant to the set location. Users can also select which type of notifications they would like to receive.

“We encourage everyone to stay up to date with our current warnings and forecasts, especially throughout severe weather seasons, and this new function will make it even easier to access simple weather information at their fingertips.”

Whight says people needed to update or install the latest version of the app for the push notifications feature to work, and the app will work on all supported operating systems.

“Users can lodge their feedback through the app feedback form with as much detail as possible to allow Bureau experts to continue refining and tailoring the BOM Weather app to meet their needs.”