Where to Shelter When an Alert Sounds
After a thunderstorm or tornado alert, residents enter their address and floor to see where to shelter, when to act, and when it is safe to go outside.
When a thunderstorm or tornado alert sounds, residents enter their address and floor to receive a countdown action card combining the alert area, estimated arrival time, and suitable places to shelter at home. It flags basements, windowless rooms, or unsuitable locations based on the household’s actual conditions, and rewrites the steps when the alert escalates.
After the alert ends, it continues monitoring flooded roads, power outages, and air quality to indicate when it is appropriate to return home or go out.
Why now
On July 18, New Jersey had simultaneous thunderstorm, flash-flood, and air-quality alerts, leaving residents with continuously changing household decisions before and after an alert, not just a single sheltering action. S1 Over the past 168 hours, searches for "tornado warning nj" exceeded 5,000 and rose 100%, but this spike ended on July 18, so it only indicates that a sudden alert concentrated demand into a brief window.
Target user
Families in apartments, townhouses, or detached homes across New Jersey and the northeastern United States, especially when an alert has just sounded, children, older adults, or people with limited mobility are at home, and no one can quickly tell which part of their floor is safest.
Minimal entry point
Start with the free NWS Alerts API: query active alerts by the address’s geocoded coordinates and read the alert area, severity, start and end status, and official instructions. Users only add their floor, whether they have a basement, and available interior windowless rooms; the page then generates an action card that updates with the alert status. S2
Punching above its weight
After each local alert, rapidly publish free, searchable, shareable county-level action pages. Partner with apartment property managers, community associations, and local emergency-information accounts to embed the prompt for residents to enter their floor and room conditions in their notifications.
Competitors & gaps
- FEMA AppGoogle
- The FEMA App’s public features focus on real-time weather alerts, shelter search, and disaster preparedness. The opening is an action card that turns an address, floor, and room conditions into immediate guidance during an alert, then continues with travel decisions after it ends. S3
- American Red Cross Emergency AppGoogle
- The American Red Cross Emergency App already offers several alert types, guidance before, during, and after emergencies, and family safety check-ins. Its public descriptions do not confirm a household-specific countdown workflow that adapts to a home’s floor and actual room conditions. S4
- Mobile weather apps and NWS alert pagesGoogle
- Most residents still cross-check phone weather apps, NWS pages, and maps. These tools are good at presenting the alert itself; the opening is translating the official alert into the next action for this particular home, rather than creating another weather map.
How it makes money
Charge a household subscription. Basic alerts and general shelter guidance are free; the paid tier saves multiple addresses, floor plans, and household-member profiles, and continues tracking alerts as they escalate and end.
The case against
Making estimated arrival time the core promise is risky: the NWS API explicitly does not provide radar display data, and alert text alone cannot reliably produce an address-level countdown. S2 A room recommendation that overlooks building construction, basement flooding, or temporary local official instructions could also present general guidance as a falsely certain judgment.