Watches and warnings–they may sound similar, but they mean different things. Watches cover a large area, usually for several hours, while warnings are smaller and often last less than an hour.

Below is an example of what that could look like. The watch is in yellow and the warning is a red polygon.

Example of a watch and a warning.

What will you do if your main way of getting severe weather information suddenly doesn't work? Be sure to have more than one, including turning on weather alerts in the Spectrum News app. Think about different places and times of day (and night) that you'll need to know what's going on.