[Thorzdad]

As we were driving home yesterday, my wife's iPhone (4s, iOS7) suddenly started making that familiar alert sound that normally accompanies television weather alerts...That loud, annoying beeeeeeeeeeeep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, beeeeeeeeeeeep, beep, beep. And, on the lock screen, was a pop-up warning about a local flash-flood warning (i'ts been storming here for a couple of days)

We can't figure out which of her two weather apps (Weather Bug, and the Weather Channel app) did this. Or, if either of the did. The alert settings for both apps are scaled back to the minimums, including no sounds, and not appearing on the lock screen. Is this some system-level function of iOS7? It never happened on iOS6, and she had both of those apps then, too, with the same settings.

Has anyone else had something like this happen on your iPhone? And, if so, how might one turn it off?

[The Final Dakar]

I was under the impression this was standard for iOS. Well, not the screeching, but the alert.

[ThePhoenix]

Hi,

That is sent from the national emergency alert system and is built into iOS and every other phone made in the last 5 years or so. If you go to Settings > Notification Center> go to the very bottom > Government Alerts, you will see amber alerts and Emergency Alerts. I believe iOS used to break these out in more categories so you may have had different settings under iOS 6. They are not used often, but when there is a Hurricane or Tornado or the like they will get used.

One phone doing it can be pretty rattling. However I work for one of the cell phone companies. So in our office every cube has 2 to 4 cell phone in it. On the rare occasion the alert system is used while in the office (only has happened to me twice so far) it is incredibly disorienting hearing the blast from probably about 1500 phones at max volume at once.

You can disable it, but they are only generally used in situations where you really should know what is going on.

[subego]

Amber alerts do something similar. Scared the crap out of me when it first happened.

Also know that every kid in your local school district who's not supposed to have their phone with them in class just got majorly busted.