Following Apple’s acquisition of Dark Sky in 2020, the company made significant changes to the Weather app. The Weather app in iOS16 has retained many of the features introduced last year but has also introduced a few new features of its own.
One of these features is the ability to sign up for severe weather alerts. If your style varies on your mood or the weather of the day, you may want to set up this feature. Depending upon your Apple Watch settings, you can also get these flash weather notifications on your watch.
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How to Set up Severe Weather Notifications on iOS 16
- Launch the Weather app on your iPhone
- Scroll down all the way to the bottom and locate ‘Notifications’
- Tap on Notifications
- Under the section ‘Current Location’, enable Severe Weather and Next-Hour precipitation
- Tap on Done
This makes sure that no matter where you are, you will be able to get severe weather and next-hour rain alert on your iPhone and Apple Watch
Set up Severe Weather alerts for Multiple cities
The new feature also allows setting up severe weather alerts for multiple cities. The Weather app shows all the cities you have chosen below the ‘Current Location.’
Tap on any city names, and on the next screen, you can enable Severe Weather and Next-hour Precipitation settings.
When it comes to next-hour Precipitation, Apple also has a clever map feature that shows the forecast for the next hour in a map view for the city.
Tap on the bottom left map icon when you launch the weather app.
At the bottom of the map, you will find the next-hour weather forecast.
The map shows precipitation categories in four legends: Extreme, Heavy, Moderate, and light.
Tapping on the next-hour precipitation control at the bottom will take you back to the 12-hour forecast view introduced in iOS 15.
Weather Notifications on watchOS 9
The watchOS 9 doesn’t have any special or new settings. To make sure that the severe weather notifications are piped into your Apple Watch,
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone
- Tap on Notifications
- Scroll down and tap on the ‘Weather’ app
- Make sure that the ‘Default City’ is correct
- From under ‘Notifications Settings, choose ‘Mirror my iPhone’
This makes sure the notifications are piped to your Apple Watch from the weather app on your iPhone.
Weather Widgets for iOS 16 Lock Screen design
iOS 16 introduced a new lock screen design that allows users to customize their lock screen. One of the elements of customization of your lock screen is the ability to add widgets. There are now eight weather widgets for both over and under the time: Air Quality, Conditions, Moon Events, Rain, Sun Events, Temperature, UV Index, and Wind.
Is the Severe Alert feature available in my region?
The next-hour precipitation notifications are currently only available in a few countries.
According to Apple,
“Severe weather information is available from The Weather Channel for Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States, and most countries and regions in Europe. Some users might receive severe weather alerts from various meteorological agencies through Apple Weather. Severe weather information is available from national weather services for Brazil, India, Mexico, and Thailand. Severe weather information is available from QWeather for China mainland.”
Next-hour precipitation forecasts and precipitation notifications are available for Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The information is provided by Apple using data from national weather services.
Apple has really changed the Weather app experience since iOS 15. Go ahead and try out this new feature and feel to share any comments or tips.
