WHOOPSIE

U.S. Tsunami False Alarm Was Meant to Be Test

The smartphone alerts were meant to be a National Weather Service test.

The tsunami warning that buzzed on phones across the country Tuesday was meant to be a test. The National Weather Service blamed “at least one private sector company,” for issuing the official tsunami warning text message when it was intended to me part of a monthly test. The agency also said it would investigate that happened. Many screenshots of alerts that were shared on social media have been from the app AccuWeather, which said in the statement that it “passed on a National Weather Service Tsunami Warning that was intended by the NWS to be a test but was miscoded by the NWS as a real warning.” This false alert comes on the heels of last month’s ballistic-missile false alarm in Hawaii that was determined to be caused by human error.