Severe weather alerts are a new feature in iOS 16’s Weather app.
Marielle Descalsota/Insider
To turn on severe weather alerts on your iPhone, launch the Weather app and open your list of cities.
Severe weather alerts will send you a notification whenever events like tornados, hurricanes, or flash floods are starting in your area.
You can enable severe weather alerts for certain cities, or every location you’ve saved.
The iPhone’s default Weather app has gone from a simple forecast chart to a robust tool for understanding the weather around you.
And now, a new feature in iOS 16 lets the app proactively warn you whenever severe weather events — hurricanes, floods, tornados, and more — are about to hit. Here’s how to set it up.
How to turn on severe weather alerts on iPhone
1. Open the Weather app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the three stacked lines in the bottom-right corner to open the list of cities you’re tracking, and then tap the circle icon in the top-right.
3. In the drop-down menu that opens, tap Notifications.
4. This will open the Weather app’s notifications page. You’ve now got two ways to turn on your severe weather alerts:
To turn on alerts for your current location, toggle on the Severe Weather switch near the top of the page. This means that no matter where you currently are, you’ll get alerts.If you tap any of your saved cities, you can toggle on Severe Weather for them too. This makes it so you’ll get alerts for that city whenever they go, even if you’re not there.Tap the Severe Weather switch.
Apple; William Antonelli/Insider
You can also toggle on the Next-Hour Precipitation option on this page. This sends you a notification if rain is expected to start or stop within the next hour.
You can later disable these notifications by returning to this page.
Note: To enable and use these features, you’ll need to allow the Weather app to always have access to your location. Open the Settings app, scroll down to and tap Weather, and then tap Location at the top of the page. Tap Always to enable location tracking and the alerts in turn.
How to set severe weather alerts to ‘Critical’
iOS 16 also comes with a new feature called Critical Alerts. Critical Alerts will light up your iPhone and play a sound even when your phone is silenced — and for severe weather alerts that signal imminent danger, this is good to turn on.
To give severe weather alerts “Critical” status, open the Settings app and scroll down to tap Weather, and then Notifications.
On this page, toggle on the switch labeled Critical Alerts.
Turn on “Critical Alerts” here.
Apple; William Antonelli/Insider