Changelog — NWS Alerts

Beta 1.5.5

Latest

April 26, 2026

✨ New Feature — MET DATA Tab

🌡️MET DATA Tab on Alert Details — Alert detail panels now have a third tab alongside DETAILS and IMPACTS: MET DATA. It shows real-time meteorological data for the area near each alert's centroid, organized into three color-coded sections.

📡Surface Obs (green) — Nearest METAR station data including temperature, dewpoint, relative humidity, wind direction/speed/gust, visibility, altimeter setting, heat index or wind chill where applicable, and the raw METAR string. Sourced from the Aviation Weather Center.

🔵Upper Air · Sounding (blue) — CAPE, CIN, and Lifted Index from the Open-Meteo forecast API. Values are color-coded: CAPE ≥ 2000 J/kg or LI ≤ −6 flag red, moderate thresholds flag amber, and CIN within a favorable range flags green.

🟣HRRR · Kinematic (purple) — Storm-relative helicity (SRH) for 0–1 km and 0–3 km layers, 0–6 km bulk wind shear, Energy-Helicity Index (EHI), and right-mover storm motion computed via Bunkers method — all derived using MetPy from Open-Meteo pressure-level wind data.

🌀Hodograph — An SVG hodograph is drawn inside the HRRR section, with wind profile colored by layer: red (0–1 km), yellow (1–3 km), green (3–6 km), blue (6 km+). The right-mover storm motion is marked with a crosshair.

⚡Parallel background fetch — METAR and sounding data are fetched in parallel threads during each alert refresh cycle and cached per 0.1° (METAR) and 0.5° (sounding) grid cells for 1 hour, keeping API call counts low.

✨ New Feature — Named Events

🌪️Auto-Detection — The server automatically detects significant weather outbreaks and names them based on date, states affected, and alert category. Events can also be created or edited manually in the admin panel.

📋Events List (/events) — Public page listing all detected events with status (Active / Closed), category, states affected, alert count, and start date. Color-coded left border per category (tornado, severe, flood, hurricane, winter).

🔍Event Detail Pages (/event/<slug>) — Each event has its own dedicated page with a stats grid, currently active alerts, all associated historical alerts, linked SPC Mesoscale Discussions, and SPC Day 1–3 outlook risk badges.

🔔Active Event Banner — When an active named event exists, a dismissible banner appears at the top of the dashboard linking to the event detail page. Dismissal is remembered per event ID so it doesn't reappear after close.

🔗Social Share Card — Each event detail page has a ↗ Share button that opens a modal with a live card preview. Options: Copy Link, Share on X with a prefilled tweet, and Download PNG — a 1200×630 share card rendered on-device via Canvas API (no external libraries). Event pages also include full OG/Twitter meta tags so sharing the URL on social media shows a rich preview.

✨ New Feature — Warning Clock & Storm Motion

⏱️Warning Countdown Clock — The alert detail panel now shows an SVG circular progress ring next to the timing section. The arc represents the fraction of the warning's active lifetime remaining and reanimates live every second. Color shifts from cyan to amber as the warning nears expiry and to red in the final 15 minutes.

➡️Storm Motion — Alert description text is parsed for embedded storm motion statements (e.g. STORM MOTION...NE AT 55 MPH) and displayed as a directional arrow with speed in the timing row of the detail panel.

⚡ Performance

📦Response Gzip Compression — All JSON and HTML responses are now compressed server-side with gzip. A typical /data_shown payload with hundreds of active alerts compresses by ~85%, cutting transfer time dramatically on slower connections.

🗺️Geometry Simplification — Alert polygon coordinate tolerance was increased, reducing per-alert geometry data while keeping map rendering accurate for weather alert boundaries.

🌐Sounding Rate Limit Fix — Open-Meteo sounding fetches now enforce a 2-second minimum interval between calls, a global 120-second backoff on 429 responses, and a cap of 6 new locations per 30-second cycle — eliminating the cascade of rate-limit errors that appeared in logs when many new alerts were present.

📝 Updates

📖Guide Updated — The Alert Details accordion now documents the MET DATA tab and its three sections.

📋Data Sources Updated — New sections added for Aviation Weather Center METAR API and Open-Meteo.

Beta 1.5.4

✨ New Feature — Impacts Tab

📊Impacts Tab on Alert Details — Alert detail panels now have a two-tab layout: DETAILS (existing content) and IMPACTS. The Impacts tab shows a comprehensive picture of what is affected by the alert in the area.

👥Population & Households — Estimated total population and household count for all counties under the alert, sourced from the 2020 U.S. Census.

⚠️Vulnerable Population — Counts and percentages for elderly residents (65+), young children (under 5), and mobile/manufactured homes — the groups most at risk in severe weather. Sourced from the 2022 American Community Survey.

🏗️Infrastructure Grid — County-level counts for hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient/urgent care, pharmacies, schools (K–12), colleges, child care centers, power plants, water/wastewater systems, commercial airports, and dams — sourced from the 2021 Census County Business Patterns and the USACE National Inventory of Dams.

🌊Historical Flood Risk — For each alert area, the Impacts tab shows the total number of past FEMA-declared flood disasters affecting those counties, with a LOW / MODERATE / HIGH risk label based on the most flood-prone county in the area. Data sourced from FEMA OpenFEMA.

🌪️Storm Reports In Area — Active Local Storm Reports (LSRs) that fall within the alert polygon are listed in the Impacts tab with type, magnitude, and location, color-coded by report category.

⚡ Performance Improvements

🗺️Canvas Renderer for Storm Reports — Storm report markers are now rendered on a single shared HTML5 canvas instead of individual DOM nodes. This eliminates hundreds of DOM elements when many reports are visible and dramatically reduces map lag during storm report redraws.

🔁Alert List Render Skip — The alert sidebar no longer rebuilds its HTML on every data refresh. A content signature is computed from visible alert IDs, expiry times, severities, and the active search term — if nothing changed, the rebuild is skipped entirely and only the expiry timers are updated.

📡Server-Side Data Hash — The server now includes a lightweight MD5 hash of key alert identifiers in every /data_shown response. If the hash matches the previous response, the client skips all data processing and map/sidebar updates for that refresh cycle.

⚙️Settings File Lazy Reload — Admin settings are no longer re-read from disk on every data request. The server checks the file's modification timestamp and only re-reads the file when it has actually changed, reducing unnecessary disk I/O under continuous polling.

🖱️Event Delegation on Alert List — Click, mouseover, and mouseout handlers on the alert sidebar are now attached once to the list container instead of once per alert card. This reduces listener overhead proportional to the number of active alerts.

📝 Updates

📖Guide Updated — The Alert Details section now documents the new DETAILS / IMPACTS tab layout and describes each data point shown in the Impacts tab.

📋Data Source Attribution Updated — New sections added for U.S. Census Bureau (2020 Census, 2022 ACS), Census County Business Patterns, USACE National Inventory of Dams, and FEMA OpenFEMA disaster declarations.

Beta 1.5.3

✨ New Features — SPC Probability Layers

🟧CIG Significant Hatching — Significant severe weather areas on the SPC probability layers are now shown as hatched overlays using SPC's Conditional Intensity Group (CIG) system. CIG 1 uses a forward-diagonal hatch, CIG 2 uses a backward-diagonal hatch, and CIG 3 uses a crosshatch pattern, giving a clear visual distinction between intensity levels.

📊Per-Hazard CIG Descriptions in Popups — Clicking inside a CIG hatched area now shows the intensity group level and a hazard-specific description in the map popup. For example: CIG 1 Tornado = max EF2, CIG 2 Wind = 73+ kt gusts / MCS or derecho, CIG 3 Hail = extreme hail potential.

📅Separate Day 1 / Day 2 Probability Toggles — The Tornado, Wind, and Hail probability layers can now be toggled independently for Day 1 and Day 2. This replaces the previous single per-hazard toggle, giving 6 independent controls (Tornado D1, Tornado D2, Wind D1, Wind D2, Hail D1, Hail D2) under the SPC ▾ dropdown.

🗃️SWCC CIG Chips — The SPC probability card on the SWCC page now shows CIG chips alongside each hazard row, with the intensity group number and a short description for each CIG level detected in the current outlook.

📝 Updates

📖Guide Updated — The hazard probabilities section now documents the CIG 1/2/3 system with per-hazard threshold descriptions, and notes that Day 1 and Day 2 toggles are now separate.

Beta 1.5.2

✨ New Pages

🗺Alerts by State (/state) — New index page showing all 50 states + DC with live active alert counts. Cards highlight in amber when a state has active alerts. Counts refresh every 30 seconds automatically.

📍State Alert Pages (/state/XX) — Dedicated per-state pages with a full interactive Leaflet map and scrollable alert sidebar. Includes the same tag detection (EMERGENCY, PDS, CONFIRMED, damage threats) as the main dashboard, event-type color coding, and a detail panel with full alert metadata. Updates every 30 seconds.

🕘Alert History (/history) — Search historical NWS storm-based warnings back to 2002 via the Iowa Environmental Mesonet VTEC archive. Filter by date range, state, event type, and Emergency tag. Click any result row to view full event details and a link to the IEM event page.

ℹAbout Page (/about) — New page covering what NWSAlerts.net is, how it works, data sources, and contact information.

✨ New Features

☰Slide-out Navigation Menu — Replaced the bottom button row with a clean slide-out nav drawer (☰ button in the top right). All pages are organized into Live, Tools, and Info sections. Close with ✕, click the backdrop, or press Escape.

📝 Updates

📖Guide Updated — New "Other Pages" section documents the History, State, Outlooks, Stats, and SWCC pages.

📡Data Sources Updated — DSA now documents the IEM VTEC archive and emergencies endpoints used by the History page.

🔍 SEO

🏷️Full meta tag coverage — All pages now have complete Open Graph, Twitter Card, canonical URL, and robots meta tags. Previously most pages outside the dashboard had only a basic title and description.

🗺️Dynamic sitemap — Sitemap is now generated by Flask at request time. Automatically includes all 51 state pages and all published blog posts with correct lastmod dates. Previously a stale static file missing most pages.

🤖robots.txt updated — Added proxy endpoints (/kmlproxy, /firms, /api/, device registration routes) to Disallow so crawlers don't waste crawl budget on non-indexable routes.

❓FAQ schema on Guide page — Added structured JSON-LD FAQ markup to /guide with 9 questions covering alert colors, tags, SPC outlooks, ERO, storm reports, MDs, and filters. Eligible for Google rich result Q&A snippets in search.

🕐 Outlook Schedule

⏱️Last issued time — Each product card now shows how long ago the last issuance occurred (e.g. "Last issued: 2h 14m ago · 13:00 UTC"), calculated from the most recent past scheduled slot.

🔵Up Next badge — The product updating soonest across all cards is highlighted with a blue "Up Next" badge and a subtle cyan card glow. Updates every second.

🟢Just Issued badge — If a product was issued within the last 15 minutes, a pulsing green "Just Issued" badge appears on its card header.

🔥SPC Fire Weather Outlooks added — Day 1 (01:30Z, 16:30Z) and Day 2 (01:30Z) fire weather outlook cards are now included on the schedule page.

🔶SPC Mesoscale Discussions card — New live card that fetches the active MD count from SPC every 2 minutes. Shows how many MDs are currently in effect with a pulsing green badge when active, and links directly to the SPC MD page.

Beta 1.5.1

✨ New Features — Map Layers

🔥NASA FIRMS Active Fires Layer — Satellite-detected fire hotspots from VIIRS SNPP Near Real-Time data are now available as a toggleable map layer (🔥 ACTIVE FIRES button). Markers are sized and colored by Fire Radiative Power (FRP). Only Nominal and High confidence detections are shown. Refreshes every 30 minutes.

🌀NHC Tropical Tracks Layer — Active Atlantic and Eastern Pacific tropical storm tracks from the National Hurricane Center are now available as a toggleable map layer (NHC TRACKS button). Shows storm position, intensity category, past and forecast track lines. When no storms are active, the layer loads silently with nothing displayed.

⛈️SPC Layers Grouped into Dropdown — SPC Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 convective outlooks and Mesoscale Discussions are now grouped under a single SPC ▾ dropdown pill in the toolbar, reducing clutter.

🌧️ERO Layers Grouped into Dropdown — WPC Excessive Rainfall Outlook Days 1–5 are now grouped under a single ERO ▾ dropdown pill.

💬Mesoscale Discussions — Independent Toggle — Mesoscale Discussions are now their own independent toggle (MDs item inside the SPC ▾ dropdown). They no longer require SPC Day 1 to be active and can be clicked and viewed on their own.

✨ New Features — Storm Reports

🌪️Storm Reports Switched to IEM GeoJSON — Storm reports are now sourced from Iowa State University IEM's GeoJSON LSR feed instead of SPC CSV. This provides richer data including source attribution (trained spotter, emergency manager, law enforcement, public, etc.).

🌊New Report Types: Funnel Cloud, Waterspout, Flash Flood — Storm report markers now include funnel cloud, waterspout, and flash flood event types in addition to tornado, wind, and hail.

🔭Spotters Only Filter — A new "Spotters Only" toggle in the storm reports layer filters reports to show only those from trained spotters, filtering out public and other less-vetted sources.

✨ New Features — Alert Details

🎨Redesigned Alert Details Popup — The alert detail panel has been redesigned with a colored severity accent bar, a severity chip badge, and a compact timing grid showing issuance, onset, and expiration at a glance.

🩹 Fixes

⚠️Damage Threat Tags Correctly Detected — Damage threat tags (CONSIDERABLE, DESTRUCTIVE, CATASTROPHIC) are now read from the NWS parameters.thunderstormDamageThreat field and correctly labeled as "DAMAGE THREAT" in the UI.

📜Alert Details Popup Scrolling Fixed — The alert details panel now uses a single scroll container, preventing layout issues where the body content was not scrollable.

🖱️Alert Details Close/Zoom Buttons Side-by-Side — The close and zoom-to-alert buttons in the alert details popup are now displayed side-by-side instead of stacked.

🔥Active Fires Confidence Display Fixed — VIIRS confidence codes now display as full words (Nominal, High) instead of the raw single-letter code (N, H).

💬Mesoscale Discussion Polygons Clickable Independently — Clicking a Mesoscale Discussion polygon no longer requires SPC Day 1 to be active. The popup and overlapping picker now respond to mdEnabled correctly.

⚡ Performance

🚀Active Fires Canvas Renderer — Fire hotspot markers now use Leaflet's canvas renderer, drawing all points onto a single <canvas> element instead of creating thousands of individual DOM nodes. Significantly reduces render time and memory usage for large fire events.

🧹Low-Confidence Fire Detections Filtered — VIIRS "Low" confidence detections are dropped before rendering, reducing marker count by roughly 30–50% without losing meaningful data.

📄 Documentation

📖User Guide Updated — The guide now covers the SPC ▾ and ERO ▾ dropdown pills, the independent Mesoscale Discussion toggle, updated storm report types, and the new Active Fires and NHC Tracks layers.

📄Privacy Policy, Terms & Data Sources Updated — All three legal/attribution pages updated to reflect IEM as the storm reports source and NASA FIRMS as the active fires source.

✨ New Features — Blog

📝Blog Page — New public /blog page lists all published posts newest-first.

🔗Individual Post Pages — Each blog post has its own shareable URL (/blog/<id>) with a Copy Link button.

🖊️Rich Text Editor — Admin blog post form supports bold, italic, underline, bullet lists, links, text color, and font size.

🔔Dashboard Blog Banner — A dismissable banner appears on the dashboard when blog posts are published that day. Shows post count if multiple posts. Reappears if a new post is added after dismissal.

📊Blog Button with Post Count — The Blog button in the status bar shows today's post count (e.g. Blog (2)) and replaces the old Feedback button.

Beta 1.5

✨ New Features — Dashboard

🗺️Map Hover Highlight (Card → Map) — Hovering an alert card in the sidebar now pulses the corresponding polygon on the map, making it easy to locate any alert instantly.

🗺️Map Hover Highlight (Map → Card) — Hovering a polygon on the map now highlights the matching card in the sidebar, with bidirectional sync.

📢Announcement Dismiss Fixed — Banner close button (✕) and modal "Got it" button now correctly dismiss announcements and mark them as seen.

📖Interactive User Guide — A new /guide page explains all dashboard features with interactive accordions, mock UI demos, step-by-step walkthroughs, and a sticky section navigator. Covers alerts, the map, SPC/ERO/WPC overlays, Mesoscale Discussions, filters, and settings. Accessible via the Guide button in the bottom-right status bar.

🔍 SEO & Discoverability

🔍SEO Meta Tags — Full Open Graph, Twitter Card, and schema.org structured data (WebSite + WebApplication) added to the dashboard for better search engine indexing and rich link previews.

🗂️Sitemap & Robots — sitemap.xml and robots.txt added with /sitemap.xml and /robots.txt routes in the backend.

✨ New Features — SWCC Page

⛈️SPC Convective Outlooks (Day 1–3) — Day 1, 2, and 3 SPC convective outlook data now feeds into the National Situation, Threat Matrix, Regional Deep Dive, 5-Day Concern Board, and Forecast Narratives sections.

🔥SPC Fire Weather Outlooks (Day 1–2) — SPC Fire Weather Day 1 and Day 2 outlooks integrated across all SWCC analysis sections.

🌧️WPC Rainfall & Hazard Outlooks — WPC QPF, Excessive Rainfall Outlook (ERO), and Hazard Outlooks integrated across all SWCC sections.

📅5-Day Concern Board Overhaul — Now shows actual SPC risk categories, tornado/wind/hail probabilities, fire weather outlooks, and ERO per day instead of repeating active alert data.

💬SPC Convective Cards — Expanded Discussion — Cards now show more discussion text with a collapsible Show more / Show less expand button.

💬SPC Fire Weather Cards — Expanded Discussion — Same expand treatment applied to Fire Weather outlook cards.

💬WPC Cards — Expanded Details — WPC cards now surface QPF amounts, affected areas, winter storm impacts, and full discussion text with Show more / Show less.

🖥️ Desktop App (v1.4.3)

🔔Notification Preferences Window — New settings window lets you configure exactly which alert types, severity levels, and tags trigger desktop notifications.

🔕No Startup Notifications — Notifications now only fire for new alerts that arrive while the app is running — not for existing alerts loaded on startup.

🔄Auto-Update Support — App now auto-checks for updates via electron-updater and prompts to install when a new version is available.

🗺️ Map — SPC Overlays

⛈️SPC Day 1 / Day 2 / Day 3 Convective Outlooks on Map — Categorical outlook polygons (HIGH, MDT, ENH, SLGT, MRGL, GEN TSTM) for all three days are now available as separate toggleable map layers (SPC D1 / SPC D2 / SPC D3 buttons).

🖱️Clickable SPC Outlook Polygons — Clicking any SPC outlook zone shows a popup with the risk category, description, Day 1–2 tornado/wind/hail probabilities (including SIG indicators), valid date range, per-hazard definitions, and a direct link to the SPC outlook page.

🖱️SPC Entries in Overlapping Alert Picker — When an SPC outlook zone overlaps with active NWS alerts at a clicked point, all items appear together in the overlapping picker for easy selection.

✨Hover Glow on SPC & Mesoscale Discussion Polygons — Hovering over an SPC outlook polygon or Mesoscale Discussion zone now highlights it with a glow effect for easier identification.

🎨SPC Outlook Color Theme — Purple — SPC outlook polygons and toggle buttons now use a purple color scheme to visually distinguish them from ERO and WPC Hazard overlays.

🗺️ Map — WPC / ERO Overlays

🌧️WPC Excessive Rainfall Outlook (ERO) Days 1–5 — Toggleable polygon overlays for all five ERO days, color-coded by risk category (Marginal / Slight / Moderate / High). Layers refresh every 5 minutes from WPC GeoJSON feeds.

⚠️WPC Hazards Outlook (Days 3–7) — Precipitation, temperature extreme, wildfire/drought, and flooding hazard polygons sourced from WPC KML threat products and rendered on the map as a separate toggleable layer. Refreshes every 10 minutes.

🖱️Clickable ERO & WPC Hazard Polygons — Clicking any ERO or WPC Hazard zone shows a popup with the risk/hazard category, plain-language description, flash flood probability (ERO), valid date range, and a direct link to the WPC product page.

📋Unified Outlooks Legend — A single legend panel now covers SPC, ERO, and WPC Hazards together. Only sections with active data are shown; the legend hides automatically when all overlays are off.

🎨Overlay Color Coding — ERO toggle buttons and polygons use green; WPC Hazards toggle button uses blue; SPC uses purple — making each product instantly recognizable at a glance.

🩹 Patch Fixes

🗺️Overlapping Alert Picker — Clicking a point on the map where multiple alert polygons overlap now shows a picker menu listing all overlapping alerts sorted by severity, instead of opening only the top-most alert.

☠Life-Threatening Tag False Positive — Cancellation/expiration notices containing phrases like "no longer poses an immediate threat to life" no longer incorrectly receive the Life Threatening tag.

🗺️SPC Outlook & Storm Reports Default Off — Both map layers now default to off on page load instead of on.

📄Privacy Policy Updated — Added sections covering the desktop app, webhooks, and third-party data sources. Contact info added.

📄Terms of Service Updated — Added sections for the desktop app, acceptable use (proxy abuse, scraping), third-party services, and contact info.

📡Data Sources Updated — Added SPC Storm Reports and NWS WWA overlay as distinct entries. Clarified SPC section to cover Mesoscale Discussions.

⚡ Performance

🚀Eliminated per-request file I/O — /data_shown and /data_all now serve suppression, injection, MOTD, and overrides directly from in-memory globals instead of reading admin_settings.json on every poll cycle.

🚀Webhook check no longer reads disk — Background alert loop now checks webhook config from memory instead of re-reading the settings file every 15 seconds.

🧹Rate limit memory cleanup — Per-IP rate limit history capped at 500 entries; stale IPs idle for more than 1 hour are pruned automatically when the table exceeds 2,000 entries.

Beta 1.4.3

✨ New Features

📢Site Announcements — Admins can now publish announcements that appear as a banner at the top of the dashboard or as a modal popup on page load. Announcements support custom messages, frequency controls (once per user or every visit), and optional start/end dates.

🖥️NWSAlerts Desktop App — NWSAlerts is now available as a free Windows desktop app. Get instant desktop notifications for major alerts, a system tray icon with live alert count, and the full dashboard in a native window. Download here.

🔔Custom Notification Preferences — Desktop app users can now choose exactly which alert types, severity levels, and impact tags trigger desktop notifications from the Notification Settings menu.

🔄Auto Updates — The desktop app now automatically checks for updates in the background and prompts you to install them when a new version is available.

🐛 Bug Fixes & Improvements

🔧Download Link Hidden in App — The Download Desktop App link in the About section and footer is now automatically hidden when using the desktop app.

🔧Expand Button Hidden on Mobile — The map expand button is no longer shown on mobile devices where it is not usable.

🔧Restored /stats Route — The Stats page was inaccessible due to a missing route. It has been restored.

Beta 1.4.2

✨ New Features

🏷️Impact Tag System — Alerts now display impact tags automatically detected from NWS alert text. Supported tags: 🚨 EMERGENCY, 💧 FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY, ⚠ PDS, ✓ CONFIRMED, 🌪 TORNADO POSSIBLE, 🌊 CATASTROPHIC, 💥 DESTRUCTIVE, ☠ LIFE THREATENING, ⚡ CONSIDERABLE. Tags appear on alert cards, the map, and the details panel.

🗺️Tag Labels Always Visible on Map — Alerts with active tags now display their label on the map at all zoom levels, so critical alerts are never hidden regardless of how far you're zoomed out.

✎User Tag Overrides — You can manually override auto-detected tags on any alert directly from the alert details panel. Overrides are saved locally and display an indicator showing the tag was overridden.

⚡Tagged Alerts Flash Continuously — Alerts tagged EMERGENCY, FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY, or CATASTROPHIC now flash continuously on the map and sidebar for their entire active lifetime, matching the behavior of Tornado Warnings.

🌊Flash Flood Emergency Color — Flash Flood Emergency alerts now use a distinct blue color on the map and sidebar to differentiate them from standard Flash Flood Warnings.

🎨 Design

🏷️New Badge Styles — Each tag has a distinct color and style. EMERGENCY and CATASTROPHIC badges include a pulsing glow animation. Override indicators show clearly on both the sidebar card and the map label.

🗺️Map Override Indicator — Map labels show a small ✎ symbol when a tag has been manually overridden, so you always know which tags are auto-detected vs manually applied.

🐛 Bug Fixes & Improvements

🔧Tag Suppression Logic — Higher-severity tags correctly suppress lower ones on the same alert.

🔧Stale Override Cleanup — Tag overrides for expired alerts are automatically removed on each data refresh.

🔧Flash Colors Updated — EMERGENCY alerts flash pink, FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY flash blue, and CATASTROPHIC flash purple.

Beta 1.4.1

✨ New Features

🗺️Radar Loop — 12-frame NEXRAD reflectivity loop with play/pause, frame scrubber, and opacity slider. Live frame auto-refreshes every 5 minutes.

🌙Dark Map Mode — Toggle between light and dark base map tiles from the map header. Preference saved across sessions.

📊Alert Count in Tab Title — Browser tab shows the current active alert count so you can monitor at a glance.

⌨️Keyboard Shortcuts — S Settings, F Fullscreen, Esc Close modals.

🗃️State Filter — Filter alerts by one or more US states from Settings.

⚡Flash Speed & Ticker Speed Controls — Adjust flash and ticker speeds in Settings.

ℹ️About Section in Settings — Quick links to Data Sources, Terms, Privacy, and Feedback.

🎨 Design

🖥️Dashboard Redesign — Unified visual style matching SWCC and Stats. New fonts, darker panels, corner accents, grid overlay, and blue accent colors.

📄Page Redesigns — Terms, Privacy, and Data Sources pages redesigned to match.

🐛 Bug Fixes

🔧Fixed focused weather "Weather unavailable" error for ld+json NWS responses

🔧Fixed expiry timers triggering too late — now triggers at 6 minutes

🔧Fixed alert time formatting showing raw ISO strings

🔧Fixed Settings defaults inconsistency between first load and Reset Defaults

Beta 1.4

✨ New Features

🔍Real-time alert search box in the alert list panel

📊Live severity summary bar with count pills above the alert list

🟢Live connection status indicator in the status bar

⚠️Latest Severe+ button to jump to the most recent high-impact alert

🌪️Tornado Warning tag detection — EMERGENCY, PDS, CONFIRMED

⛈️Severe Thunderstorm Warning tornado-possible tag detection

⚡Continuous flash for Tornado Warnings and tornado-tagged Severe Thunderstorm Warnings

🎨 Design & Performance

🎨Redesigned alert cards with colored event names and cleaner layout

🖥️Complete visual overhaul of Stats page

🚀Non-blocking zone fetching, parallel geometry loading, single FeatureCollection map layer

💾In-memory image and data proxy caching with per-domain TTLs