By SALINA POST
If you were wondering about that emergency alert on your cellphone this morning, so was the National Weather Service in Wichita.
In a post on its Facebook page late this morning, NWS-Wichita wrote:
Once again our apologies for the inconvenience regarding the test tornado drill. As part of the Kansas Severe Weather Preparedness Week, a test Tornado Warning was sent out at 10 am CST this morning. Typically, this warning is used to test NOAA Weather Radios, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and serves as an opportunity for local jurisdictions to test their outdoor warning sirens. However, this year the test Tornado Warning also activated the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system which sends alerts to many cellular devices. When this WEA alert was issued, there was no wording indicating this was a test Tornado Warning. We have started an investigation into why the WEA system was activated. We sincerely apologize for any confusion.
Early this afternoon, NWS-Wichita announced in a post on its Facebook page that the issue had been identified and remedied:
After investigating the cause of the unintentional WEA alerts this morning. We have identified that new software implemented last week mistakenly allowed the test to go out as an actual warning. The software is fixed. Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience and confusion.