Setting up a news reader app to get flooding alerts on your phone

It is quite simple to install and set up a news feed app that will periodically check if we have published any new flooding alerts and send a notification to your phone or other device.

If you would like to receive an email alert instead please contact us directly.

Any number of Atom/RSS news reader software for your computer or portable device will work, and the set up will largely be the same as the instructions given here. On this page we describe how to set up the Free and Open Source 'Feeder' news reader app for Android to receive alerts on your phone. It is available in the Google Play store and on F-Droid.

iPhone and iPad users might try the NetNewsWire app, although I have no experience with it myself. MS Windows, MacOS, and Linux users might try Raven Reader; again I have no direct experience using it, but it looks nice.

  1. Install the app. I leave this to you.
  2. Open the app and tap the three vertical dots menu in the top right.
  3. Select "+ Add feed"
  4. Fill in the feed's URL:
      https://stormy.msrc.sunysb.edu/sbss_atom_feed.xml
  5. Tap "Search", a bubble of text should show up saying "Stony Brook Storm Surge Advisory". Tap on it.
  6. Turn on "Notify for new items", then tap "OK" at the bottom of the settings list.
  7. Great! You're good to go. When you read an article you can tap the up-arrow into a box icon near the top right of your screen to follow the link to the SBSS website.
  8. In the Feeder app, once you've read a news item it becomes hidden. If you want to keep them around, tap the filter icon (like a stack of lines forming an upside down triangle) and make sure the "Read" (past tense) tick box is checked. You might also want to make "Saved" news items visible if you've explicitly held on to any earlier alerts.
  9. Depending on your preference you may want to adjust the frequency that the app checks our site for new alerts. To do this, tap the three vertical dots menu in the top right and select "Settings". At the top of the Syncing section is the option "Look for new articles...". Tap on that and make your adjustment, e.g. to only look every 3 hours, or perhaps every 15 minutes if the clouds are rolling in. I also turned on the switch just below it to check for alerts when the app starts.
  10. Some more advanced news reader apps, like Flym, allow you to filter the news items by custom keyword. This feature can be quite handy to limit alerts to only the tide station nearest to you.