National Weather Service: No East Coast tsunami warning

ORLANDO, Fla. (FOX 35 WOFL) - People across the country are reporting they received a tsunami warning alert, but officials say it is just a test.

The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center issued it around 8:30 a.m. EST, according to the National Weather Service in Charleston, South Carolina. However, they say, users received the test message as an actual Tsunami Warning.

“A Tsunami Warning is not in effect. Repeat, a Tsunami Warning is not in effect,” they say on Twitter.

NWS says, "There is NO current Tsunami Warning, Advisory, Watch, or Threat for the U.S. Please refer to tsunami.gov and @NWS_NTWC for up to date information."

National Weather Service locations in major coastal areas in Florida report users received the alert. Some reported seeing it as far west as Houston and as far north as the New England area. In the Florida Keys, weather officials say the NWS issues a test message every month and some weather apps available on smartphones sent alerts.

Most report the alert came from the Accuweather app and sourced the National Weather Service.
This afternoon Accuweather issued a statement saying their system worked and it was the Weather Service that didn’t sent the test correctly.

“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 company said in the statement.

Accuweather also stated that the alert went out as a warning to several other channels as well and that the company warned the National Weather Service that this could become an issue back in 2014.

So far the National Weather Service has not responded to Accuweather’s statement, only saying on their website that they are looking into the test message.