User Guide - Mid North Storms

Alert & Warning Icons

Damaging Winds BoM Severe Weather / Gale gusts

Severe Thunderstorm BoM warnings for intense storm cells

Large Hail Thunderstorm warnings indicating hail

CFS Bushfire / Incident Active fire incident or Fire Weather

Earthquake Seismic activity (color scales with magnitude)

SES Tree Down / Hazard Active emergency response unit deployed

Road Rescue / Vehicle Crash SES or Emergency Services road response

Flood Warning Riverine or flash flood risk declared

Marine Warning Gale, wind, or dangerous surf warning

Sheep Graziers Alert Cold, wet, or windy livestock alerts

Frost / Freeze Severe frost risk for crops/roads

Unplanned Outage SA Power Networks active repair

Planned Maintenance Scheduled power grid upgrades

Road Closure Traffic SA complete thoroughfare block

Roadworks Active highway construction / speed drop

Traffic Incident Vehicle collision or road hazard

SES Sandbag Station Active sand distribution site

Cancelled / Safe Warning or incident resolved/downgraded

Polygons & Shaded Boundaries

Land Warning Area BoM Severe Weather / CFS Emergency warning

Marine Warning Area Coastal water zones, gulfs, and open sea

Watch & Act Area Heightened risk; condition updates pending

Cancelled Region Threat passed; warning no longer active

Multi-Alert Navigation

When multiple incidents or warnings occur over the exact same area, alerts are grouped together into a single paginated card.

Clicking the pin or anywhere inside the shaded polygon opens the alert card.
Use the Prev and Next buttons at the bottom of the card to flip through every alert in that zone without any warning getting hidden underneath another.

CFS Fire Danger Ratings & Bans

Fire danger polygons reflect the latest official SA Country Fire Service (CFS) declarations:

Catastrophic Extreme fire danger conditions

Extreme Severe fire danger conditions

High Heightened fire danger conditions

Moderate / No Rating Baseline safety conditions

Why are districts green with "No Rating"?
Outside of the official fire danger season, or on mild weather days where the CFS has not declared an elevated fire danger rating, districts display with a soft green boundary. This indicates baseline safety conditions and confirms that telemetry is active and no bans are in effect.

Accessibility Settings

Access these tools at any time via the Layers menu under the Accessibility Options dropdown:

🔊 Enable Text-to-Speech (TTS): Enables a dedicated speaker button on all incident cards, warnings, earthquake reports, and weather telemetry pop-ups. Tapping the speaker reads the details aloud. Closing the pop-up or turning pages automatically silences the voice immediately.
👁️ Colorblind Support (High Contrast): Swaps interface alert colors to the colorblind-accessible Okabe-Ito palette. Warning polygons receive high-contrast dashed borders, and live rain radar imagery is automatically converted into high-contrast monochrome tiles.
🔍 High Visibility (Larger Text & Icons): Increases font sizes across all menus, toggles, and pop-up windows. Map markers, numbered clusters, and alert badges scale up uniformly for easier readability, and the bottom telemetry bar wraps text cleanly to prevent overflow on compact mobile screens.

Lightning Telemetry

Lightning data is fetched in real-time from the Blitzortung high-precision sensor network. Individual strikes are plotted and age-graded by colour:

0 to 15 Minutes Old Immediate, fresh ground strikes (Active cell)

15 to 60 Minutes Old Recent strike activity showing storm track

1 to 24 Hours Old Historical strike path showing system decay or past daily activity

Using Layers & Filters

Toggle Map Layers: Tap the Layers button (top-right) to reveal display controls for individual agencies (BoM, CFS, SES, SAPN, Traffic SA).
Toggle All Shortcuts: Each agency section has a Toggle All switch to clear or restore entire categories with one click.
Weather Display Modes: Use the top selector bar to switch weather station pins between Temperature (🌡️), Wind Gusts (💨), and Rainfall (🌧️). You can customize units (Celsius/Fahrenheit, kmh/kts/mph, mm/inches) in the Layers menu.
Significant Weather Filter: Under the Radar & Weather category, toggle Show Significant Amounts Only to hide routine weather observations and only display extreme heat/cold, high winds, or heavy rainfall.
Earthquake Filters: Filter seismic events dynamically by timeframe (ranging from the last 1 hour up to 7 days) and minimum magnitude threshold (e.g., 2.0+, 3.0+).
Lightning Options: Filter strike clutter by selecting 15 min, 30 min, 1 hr, 3 hr, or 24 hr windows from the Live Lightning Detection filter drawer. You can also decouple and toggle the live Strike Counter independently of the map pins.
Map Display Details: Toggle Town Labels, Region Labels, or Coastlines & Region Boundaries from the Base Map Display drawer to customize your map view.

How Watch Zones Work

Watch Zones monitor an exact radius around your home, property, or workplace and issue browser notifications when an event intersects that circle.

Tap + Add Watch Zone in the bottom menu bar.
Search your town/address (e.g. Burra, Clare) or tap Pick On Map to drop a pin at your exact coordinates.
Adjust your Alert Radius using the slider (500m up to 50km).
Select which hazards to monitor: Emergency warnings, power outages, local lightning strikes, or rain downpours.
Audio Chimes: Enable audio chimes to hear a distinct alert sound (e.g., a subtle chime for rain, a warning alarm for land warnings) when a hazard triggers your zone.
(Optional) Add Exclude Keywords (e.g., burn off, controlled) to silence non-critical notifications.
Tap Save Zone. Your browser will evaluate incidents every refresh cycle and notify you if a shape or strike enters your zone.

Live Data Ingestion & Sources

Telemetry is aggregated automatically on our Virtual Private Server via parallel collectors:

Source	Feed Product / Endpoint	Refresh
Bureau of Meteorology	CAP-AU XML Alerts, Public Warnings, AWS Observations	Every 3 min
Country Fire Service	CRIIMSON Incident JSON, CAP Warnings, FDR Ratings	Every 3 min
State Emergency Service	SafeCom SAM Public Incidents & Warnings JSON	Every 3 min
SA Power Networks	Public Outages Telemetry REST API	Every 3 min
Traffic SA	DPTI OpenData ArcGIS Feature Server	Every 3 min
Earthquake Feeds	Global/Local Seismic GeoJSON Data	Every 3 min
Blitzortung / Community	TOA Real-Time Lightning Sensor Network	Every 15 sec
RainViewer	Global Radar Mosaic Satellite Imagery Tile API	Every 3 min

Legal Disclaimer & Limitation of Liability

Developmental & Experimental Tool Only: This dashboard is an independently developed community software project created to consolidate publicly available emergency telemetry. It is strictly intended for situational awareness and educational reference.

NOT for Primary Life Safety: Do NOT make life-safety, evacuative, defensive, or emergency operational decisions based on this dashboard. Automated data pipelines, internet connectivity, upstream API feeds, and server cron jobs can fail, suffer latency, or produce incomplete representations during severe weather or infrastructure collapse.

Official Channels Prevail: Always consult official government channels during emergency incidents:

Life-threatening emergencies: Dial 000
Bushfire emergencies: Visit cfs.sa.gov.au or tune to your local ABC radio emergency broadcaster
Severe weather & flood warnings: Visit bom.gov.au
Storm damage & sandbagging: Visit ses.sa.gov.au or call 132 500

Warranties & Liability: This platform is provided "as-is" and "as-available" without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, uptime, accuracy, or uninterrupted service. In no event shall the platform owner, hosting operators, or data contributors be held liable for any damages, loss of property, injuries, or claims resulting from the use of, or inability to use, the information provided on this application.