Last week, Portland was experiencing some typically strange weather. For several days in a row, we’d have 5 minutes of pouring rain, 5 minutes of giant hail and then — naturally — 5 minutes of bright and shining sun.

Then, ten minutes of nothing and the whole goshdarn thing…starts…all over…again (P.S. If anyone gets that musical reference, I’ll be very impressed).

In any case, if anyone should be tuned into the constantly shifting weather in PDX and beyond, it’s our emergency managers. The folks at the National Weather Service know this and have redesigned their alert system to send custom text messages and e-mails by city, county and type of emergency.

Sadly, this very cool interactive system isn’t open to the general public right now — as they say, “iNWS is intended for members of community emergency planning and response management (i.e. emergency managers, law enforcement, fire and emergency responsers, transportation and safety managers, public officials), Skywarn Net Control operators, government partners of NWS offices, and members of the electronic media. Do not register if you do not fit this description.”

If you do qualify, you should register now and set up your notifications. You can also get answers to many of your questions here.

I’m all signed up and ready to be alerted, though with weather (finally!) in the sunny 70’s, I don’t see many texts heading my way quite yet!