With the AC-EMWIN system, we can send *FREE* NWS weather products to your e-mail account, text pager, cellphone, or PDA...free of advertisements. For certain special situations, we can even send bulletins to your web page. The only requirement for web pages is that it must be for a public service purpose, the public must have access to the information and you cannot charge or restrict anyone to access the information.

Customers we've served include the City of Gainesville, the County of Alachua, the United States Navy, the University of Florida, Bradford County EM, Cape Coral FD, Gulf County EM, Keystone Heights FD, Wachovia Bank, SKYWARN spotters, ham radio operators, employees of the local area Press, and the general public.

Anyone wishing to receive NWS products to their EMAIL inbox, or to their pager device using an email address method, should email us with their contact information (name, current address, home and backup telephone number - in case we need to contact you regarding a problem), the email address that you would like us to send the bulletins to, when you do NOT wish to receive bulletins (weekends? weeknights between 9pm and 8am?, etc. - if applicable), which package you would like to receive, and which counties you would like to receive them for.

We need to know a few things, first, though...

1. For email or pagers, we need to know which standard bulletin package you would like to receive. A complete list of packages we've made available can be found here.
2. For which county county(s) you would like to receive them. (Multiple counties may be specified.)
3. When you would not like to receive them (if there are any time periods through which you would NOT like to receive them). Some people want the bulletins no matter what time it is. Some people don't want to be bothered at night, no matter what. If you don't want them after-hours, let us know. For bulletins issued inside that cutoff time, do you want us to DISCARD THEM ENTIRELY, or HOLD them until the morning and still send them, regardless of how old they are? Yes; we can do that, too, for you. :o) This is a very powerful custom option that most other PAY services don't have.

   ...and for those wishing to have them sent to a pager...

4. The name of the pager service provider that you use. For example, AllTel, Sprint, Verizon?
5. The METHOD that you would like us to use to send you a page. For example, to your email account (in which case, we need your email address), to a your pager's e-mail address (in which case, we need THAT); or by using one of the following paging methods: WTCP, SNPP, or TAP. (Yes, sometimes you can send to a pager using an email address, too, if you happen to know it and you can't remember or find out the other information.)
6. Your pager's PIN number. If you want us to send using WCTP, SNPP, or TAP, your pager has a PIN number that those protocols need in order to make this work. (NOTE: We DON'T mean youa pager's CAP code, here. That means nothing to us and we can't do anything with that.)

Depending upon what your pager/PDA/cellphone is capable of, the system can send Full Text, Full Text with No Headings, Selected Text, Selected Text with No Headings, and Short messages. We recommend short, abbreviated ("parsed", see below) messages for pagers unless you've got unlimited text and unlimited messgae length AND it doesn't cost you anything.

• Full Text. The whole message is sent in it's entirety, with bulletin ID, and all header information intact.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Full Text with No Headings. All of the text, but with the heading lines removed.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Selected will send only the text in the message's UGC group associated with the alarm. This means that if a bulletins has, say, the forecast for multiple counties (sorted by UGC groups - That's the "FLZ000-036..." stuff that you see), and you only want the text for Alachua County, then this will only send the text relating to Alachua County.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Selected No Headings removes the heading lines from the messages, and sends only the part of the bulletin for the county area selected.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Short just sends a customized, very short, abbreviated message, such as..."NWS-JAX has issued a Tornado Warning for Alachua County, until 7:00PM."
  [Examples] (This method is recommended for sending to pagers.)

PARSING:

The short pager messages can be broken down into small packets suitable for sending to cellular phones and pagers. We can send in 80-character increments. Most text pagers can handle from 120 to 240 characters. You will need to know and be able to tell us your own pager's limitations. This will help us to format the appropriate message length when we send to your pager.

We can use what is called "parsing" to reduce the size of pager messages sent even further. Parsing strips all line feeds and carriage returns from a message, and also uses a word substitution file to abbreviate words, allowing space for more words to fit onto the limited displays of pagers. [Example]

DECIPHERING ABBREVIATIONS USED

If you don't know what an abbreviation means, you can use the Word Substitution File to find out. Most abbreviations should be common sense; but some may be more difficult. In those cases, use of this list should help you. This word file is a constant work in progress, since we change things in it as we learn.

Free emergency alerts. Free weather alerts. Free emergency bulletins. Free weather bulletins. Free weather texts. Free weather notices. Free weather emails. Free weather pager notices.