The National Weather Service (NWS) today met its target to start sending alerts over the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) by the end of this month, as reported earlier on AWARE. Today at 2:00PM EDT, FEMA enabled the NWS channel on the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) which will now send weather alerts to all CMAS-enabled mobile devices in areas affected by a major weather event. NWS posted the following statement on its homepage:

…FEMA to Activate Wireless Emergency Alerts for the NWS Today…
Published: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:39:29 EDT
Beginning this afternoon, the most critical NWS warnings will be triggering Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) on WEA-capable phones. NWS produced Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) messages are pushed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS). These messages are formatted to trigger a WEA broadcast for the following types of NWS warnings.
Tsunami Warnings
Tornado and Flash Flood Warnings
Hurricane, Typhoon, Dust Storm and Extreme Wind Warnings
Blizzard and Ice Storm Warnings

NEWS FLASH UPDATE: We have our first NWS CMAS alert…
This afternoon, June 28, NWS issued a Flash Flood Warning in the Los Alamos, New Mexico area near Santa Fe. This alert would have triggered CMAS on any carriers in that area that transmit CMAS alerts. Did you get the alert? Tweet us: @awareforum

To find out if your mobile device is CMAS-enabled, check out the carrier-specific page links on the left side of the page at: www.ctia.org/wea/

For more information from NWS on CMAS alerts, also known as Wireless Emengency Alerts (WEA), see: www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/wea.html