The City of Laramie is helping to clear the air on who is responsible for sending weather and other community alerts to the residents of Albany County.

Albany Countywide Alerts sends community alerts that need wide distribution including hazardous conditions, missing people, lost children, and more. The City of Laramie is identifying what alerts are the responsibility of the City and County, and which alerts come directly from the National Weather Service in Cheyenne. Albany County Emergency Management (EMA), per the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, is the alerting authority, and Laramie/Albany County Records and Communications (LARC) is responsible for the alert activations. However, most weather alerts are initiated by the National Weather Service in Cheyenne.  If there is an imminent life hazard, such as a tornado, the National Weather Service sends out a message via the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to alert all residents, whether they are subscribed to Albany Countywide Alerts or not. When the National Weather Service sends out an alert, neither the County nor the City has control over them. This means the public may get alerts late into the night.

Alerts can be delivered by voice message, text, or email and users have a choice of how they receive information. Weather categories such as wind, flood, fire, hazard, winter, hail and lightning, precipitation, and severe alerts, which include thunderstorms and tornados, can be customized to a user’s preference. Both the City and County stress the importance of subscribing to receive critical emergency alerts to keep citizens informed of exactly what’s going on in the community. To learn more visit https://cityoflaramie.org/362/Get-Notified-About-Albany-Countywide-Ale and subscribe to alerts at http://albanycountywidealerts.org/.