Met Office 'threat to life' hot weather alerts accidentally sent to phones

Severe upwind alerts informing of a "significant menace to life" appeared connected phones crossed the UK owed to a investigating error, the Met Office has said.

Notifications warned of terrible upwind events including precocious temperatures, snow, crystal and rainfall successful antithetic parts of the state connected Thursday. The trial alerts, issued by a 3rd enactment aggregator, were not intended to beryllium seen by the public.

One idiosyncratic connected societal media shared a screenshot of an alert informing of "severe precocious temperature" adjacent to the forecast of 4C (39F) successful Stockport.

The Met Office, which is liable for upwind warnings successful the UK, confirmed the trial warnings had present been removed.

Some warnings told recipients to "take enactment immediately" but besides included statement substance that referred to it being a trial warning.

Information contained successful the alerts explained that the Met Office trial warnings had been issued via a meteorological aggregator that sends upwind alerts to a fig of places including Apple devices.

It is thought that the investigating mistake occurred during this aggregation process.

A Met Office spokesperson said: "We are alert of an contented wherever immoderate trial upwind warnings were displaying connected immoderate websites and apps, we’ve worked with partners to guarantee these trial warnings person present been removed.

"We’re atrocious for immoderate inconvenience, determination are presently nary Met Office Severe Weather Warnings successful unit arsenic of 14:00 Thursday 28 November."

It is unclear however galore radical received the warnings, but galore posted connected X to accidental they had seen them.

On Apple devices, users person to manually let terrible upwind informing alerts to beryllium sent arsenic notifications to their phones. This is done done the phone's upwind app.

Many parts of the UK person seen disruptive upwind implicit the past week arsenic Storm Bert hit, causing flooding, beardown winds and snowfall.

After a adust and acold time for astir of the state connected Thursday, forecasters accidental that spells of dense rainfall could deed immoderate areas aboriginal successful the evening.

In October, a responsibility with the BBC Weather website and app led to incorrect forecasts of impossibly precocious upwind speeds.

Graphics warned of hurricanes and showed estimated upwind speeds of 13,508mph successful London and 5,293mph successful Rome, arsenic good arsenic temperatures of 404C successful Nottingham and 384C successful New York.

The contented was caused by a information contented with a third-party supplier and was aboriginal fixed.