I subscribed to both the e-mail and text message alerts to see how the system worked and they appeared to work well with the warnings issued last evening. With my Blackberry on the Rogers system I was required to subscribe to an e-mail to text message service, even though I already subscribe to text messaging. They have not been able to tell me if there is an additional charge to recieve e-mail to text messages. The other unique aspect of the text message delivery is that one has to type "Read" in response to the alert to recieve the actual message. I assume this gives EMO some feedback on the number of folks who actually request the message. Possibly someone else knows why delivery is different from a normal text message and can respond here. 

Feedback on EMO Severe weather warnings:

As noted above I subscribed to and used the EMO severe weather warnings for over a month. I applaud EMO for attempting to provide weather warnings via multiple channels but I believe there is still room for improvement in the system. My observations are noted below.

• The system provides alerts for all of Ontario regardless of ones location. This is good if one wants to follow all Ontario severe weather events but it is not very effective for notifying one about severe weather in ones immediate area.  To be most effective I believe it needs to deliver only relevant notifications which relate to an address or cell phone location.
  
• The text message system requires one to enter "READ" for the system to send each specific warning message which is a bit of a nusiance. 

The volume of e-mails and text messages generated, most of which are not relevant to my area, is such that I have cancelled, or at least tried to cancel the service.  It is realtively simple to cancel the e-mail messages but cancelling the text messages is a challenge I have not overcome.  I use text messages to communicate with only a few individuals and those communications are important and time sensitive. That means I need to check every text message beep to make sure it is not an important message which can be quite a task when severe weather is around. 

I appreciate the warning system and hope my trusty weather radio will keep me informed of severe weather until the e-mail and text message system is fine tuned. 

If you want to unsubscribe to the SMS weather alerts here is the procedure which I located in the frequently asked questions section.

28. Q: How do I unsubscribe to SMS text messaging?

You can cancel your subscription to SMS text messaging by texting "unsubscribe" from your mobile device to askemo@ontario.ca.