Comprehensive Guide for Troubleshooting Missing Weather Notifications
The purpose of this guide is to consolidate all the articles used to troubleshoot a National Weather Service (NWS) alert that did not trigger a SMART Weather notification, the notification did not reach as many contacts as expected. For the following steps, you will need to know the weather alert type (flood, severe thunderstorm, etc.), alert severity (watch, advisory, or warning), expected alert time, and county name. It is helpful to have an iNWS alert from the National Weather Service.
Search for and identify the weather alert. See knowledge article EBS: How to Identify Missing Weather Alerts for instructions.
Determine which Contacts should be selected by a given weather alert in Everbridge Suite.
See knowledge article EBS: How to Determine Which Contacts Should Be Selected by a Given Weather Alert in Everbridge Suite for instructions.Ensure that the weather template conditions (New, Upgraded, Extension in Area, etc.) currently enabled are set up to allow the missing alert to trigger. Confirm that the New box is checked for the relevant weather event types on the Weather Events/Alert Subscriptions page so incoming NWS feeds are treated as new events. See knowledge article EBS: SMARTWeather Settings Best Practices for more information.
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Ensure that the organization and contact subscriptions allow the alert to trigger:
Verify that your organization is subscribed to the relevant NWS weather events and not unintentionally forwarding or suppressing them.
Confirm that the event is marked as impacting your county/area and that the NWS KML files contain the expected polygon (shape) data.
Confirm that contacts are subscribed to the relevant weather event types and that their records contain a geocoded location and at least one valid delivery method (phone, SMS, email, etc.) used by that alert.
Check the Universe tab to confirm whether the weather alerts appear there and whether the alert polygon overlaps the expected contacts.
See knowledge article EBS: Best Practices for Configuring an Everbridge Organization's Weather Alert Subscriptions for more information.
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Review quiet period behavior:
Ensure that the organization's quiet period settings permit the missing alert type to trigger at the expected time.
Check each affected contact's quiet time settings as described in knowledge article EBS: How to View and Edit a Contact's Quiet Time for Automated Weather Alerts in Everbridge Suite, as quiet time can prevent delivery even when the alert was triggered.
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If you believe an alert should have been received but it appears that Everbridge did not send it, or contacts report receiving weather alerts your organization does not see in Open/History:
Check Open/History (sent message logs) for any examples of outgoing weather alerts matching the reported time.
If no matching messages are found, document which contacts reported receiving the alerts and the approximate timestamps.
Confirm your internal understanding of whether your organization is subscribed to or forwarding those weather messages.
Once you have checked all the steps above and still agree that an alert should have been triggered (or that unexpected alerts were received), please contact Everbridge Technical Support. When opening a case, include:
Alert details (type, severity, expected time, county/area, and any iNWS/NWS reference).
Examples of affected contacts and timestamps.
Confirmation that you have reviewed Open/History and your weather subscription/quiet time settings.
Permission for Everbridge Support to review your organization's configuration so they can examine subscriptions, forwarding rules, polygons, and message logs.
If you are missing contacts for specific alerts, you may also request a live session (Zoom or Microsoft Teams) so Support can draw the alert area on the Universe map and fetch contacts with you in real time.