Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Residents along the U.S. East Coast were falsely warned Tuesday about a tsunami from a private company sending out a monthly test from the National Weather Service.
At 8:30 a.m., a push notification was sent to residents' phones warning of a "Tsunami Warning in effect" for their area. AccuWeather, a private service based in State College, Pa., said it sent out the message because of a coding error by the NWS.
"This morning AccuWeather passed on a National Weather Service Tsunami Warning that was intended by the NWS to be a test but was miscoded by the NWS as a real warning" the service said in a statement. AccuWeather has the most sophisticated system for passing on NWS tsunami warnings based on a complete computer scan of the codes used by the NWS. While the words "TEST" were in the header, the actual codes read by computers used coding for real warning, indicating it was a real warning.
"The NWS warning also later appeared on other sources such as The Weather Channel and it even appears on some pages of the NWS own website as a real warning. The NWS is the original source of the information and displayed it as a real warning."
One hour after the false warning, the NWS posted on Twitter: "There is NO current Tsunami Warning, Advisory, Watch, or Threat for the U.S."
The weather service said their test message "was not disseminated to the public via any communications channels operated by the National Weather Service," according to a statement.
"The National Tsunami Warning Center of the National Weather Service issued a routine test message at approximately 8:30 am ET this morning," the NWS said in a statement. "The test message was released by at least one private sector company as an official Tsunami Warning, resulting in widespread reports of tsunami warnings received via phones and other media across the East Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean."
Tsunamis are giant waves caused by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions under the sea. "Tsunami waves may travel as fast as jet planes over deep waters, only slowing down when reaching shallow waters," the National Ocean Service said on its website.
On Jan. 13, Hawaii residents received a false alert on their phones that said: "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." It was mistakenly sent out by Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency.
