Early Tuesday morning, National Weather Service stations along the eastern United States issued a series of text notifications alerting recipients of a tsunami warning. From New York and Boston to the Carolinas and Florida, people who received the alerts took to Twitter to inquire about what exactly was happening. So… what happened? And why was the east coast getting blasted with a general tsunami warning? According to subsequent messages from the NWS, AccuWeather, and meteorologists at several news outlets, nothing had happened. There was no impending tsunami for the eastern U.S. or elsewhere.
Turns out the text alerts that were sent out were actually part of a test that conveniently forgot to mention it was a test. Oops.
National Weather Service says some people in parts of the eastern U.S. received a test message as an actual Tsunami Warning, but the message was just a test.
There is no tsunami. pic.twitter.com/70sY2z2PrN
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 6, 2018
The NWS’s New York station later said the test alert did have the word “test” in it, but many people nonetheless apparently received notifications without this clarification. “We are currently trying to find out how a message went out as a warning,” they added. “We will update you when we find out more.”
***THERE IS NO TSUNAMI WARNING***
A Tsunami Test was conducted earlier this morning, that did have TEST in the message. We are currently trying to find out how a message went out as a warning. We will update you when we find out more.
— NWS New York NY (@NWSNewYorkNY) February 6, 2018
Even with the subsequent clarifications, however, those who had received the push notifications of an impending tsunami were still at a loss as to what was going on.
Why did I just get a tsunami warning on the way to work? 😂
— Melissa 🧜🏼♀️ (@mlwpeace) February 6, 2018
https://twitter.com/barduuuk/status/960868473000812544
https://twitter.com/optionsnyc/status/960868603057852416
https://twitter.com/coolghost101/status/960883205824901120
https://twitter.com/Fox26Mike/status/960877537999179777
(Via NBC News)