How to Get Severe Weather Alerts and Traffic Reports From Alexa
Alexa has several new commands that can help you prepare for hazardous weather or bad road conditions. These features have actually been around for weeks – Amazon quietly rolled out them to Alexa-enabled devices last month – but since the company didn’t mention updates until recently , most people didn’t notice them. Let’s take a look at all the new features you might have missed.
Extreme weather alerts and traffic updates
While several new features were added to Alexa in February, the two most notable are automatic extreme weather alerts and traffic reports for your phone.
Let’s start with weather notifications. Alexa can now alert users if extreme weather alerts are active where they live. Saying “Alexa, tell me about severe weather alerts” will enable this feature. Alexa now automatically announces any alerts without asking first. This will be especially useful in regions where natural disasters or seasonal extremes are common. You can also turn off this feature by asking Alexa to “clear severe weather alerts”.
Regarding traffic updates, you can now get an up-to-date traffic report by asking the question, “Alexa, what is the traffic?” You can also ask about the traffic conditions for specific routes or destinations, and then send a report to your phone saying “Alexa, send it to my phone”. The phone notification can also be used to launch your navigation app.
Results of new events
The last few updates are smaller, but still worth noting. Alexa users can now ask an assistant to talk about NBA games, as well as highlight the 2020 election from debates and other televised events. You can also directly access a small amount of newly added Amazon Prime Video content, including Hunters , Honey Boy, and more, by asking Alexa to play a specific TV series or movie you want to watch (assuming an Alexa device is connected or supports playback video).