THE STORY

History of
StormSync

From a general weather monitor to a dedicated NWWS-OI feed.

March 2026

StormSync VT/OI — v0.0.2 Current

The first patch release for VT/OI — focused entirely on stability and correctness. Real-world usage quickly surfaced a cluster of interconnected bugs in the VTEC parser and alert deduplication logic, all of which are addressed here.

The most significant fix involves condensed tornado warnings. When a forecaster shrinks a warning polygon, the NWS issues a multi-segment product containing both a CAN segment (for dropped counties) and a CON segment (for continuing counties). The previous parser read only the first VTEC segment and treated the entire product as a cancellation — triggering removal of the active warning. This is now correctly handled.

NEW FEATURES
  • Complete admin inject panel rewrite with correct subtype forcing for all alert types
  • Custom borderless tornado overlay notifications — stacking, animated, color-coded by tier
  • Tornado Emergency pulsing border animation; PDS pulses in purple
  • Polygon thumbnail on every alert card — visual footprint of the warning area
  • Interactive map window — click any polygon to open a full zoomable map
  • Custom audio system — assign WAV/MP3/OGG files per tornado tier from the admin panel
  • Four-tab filtering: Tornado · Severe T-Storm · Other Severe · All Severe
  • State dropdown, keyword search, and sort controls on the toolbar
  • Alert auto-expiry — warnings auto-removed at their VTEC end time
  • Detail panel — full parsed product text, VTEC data, UGC zones, and timing on click
  • Connect and disconnect audio chimes — synthesized tones, no sound file needed
  • Red disconnect button in the titlebar for manually dropping the XMPP connection
BUG FIXES
  • Fixed alert deduplication — test injects and live alerts no longer silently blocked
  • Fixed condensed warnings misread as cancellations (multi-segment VTEC)
  • Cancellations no longer trigger sound or overlay notifications
  • Tornado Emergency overlay color corrected to pink (#ff69b4)
  • Tornado PDS overlay color corrected to purple (#9b30ff)
  • Alert cards now display correct action labels (Updated, Extended, Upgraded, etc.)

This is early beta software. Bugs are expected. Please report anything unusual to contact@stormsyncapp.com.

March 2026

StormSync VT/OI — v0.0.1

A complete rebuild from the ground up. Every previous version of StormSync was a general-purpose weather monitor — pulling from public APIs, covering all phenomena, all alert types, all sources. Useful, but unfocused.

VT/OI changes that entirely. This version drops everything except one thing: the NOAA Weather Wire Service Open Interface. No public REST API as the primary source. No broad weather coverage. Just NWWS-OI — the authenticated XMPP feed used by broadcasters and emergency managers — delivering every NWS product in real time, seconds after issuance.

It is a narrower tool, but a sharper one.

October 2025 — February 2026

Silence.

After v3.0.1, development went quiet. No releases. No updates. The project sat while ideas for what came next took shape.

October 2025

StormSync v3.0.1

The final release of the original StormSync line. Still built around broad weather monitoring — public APIs, all alert types, general coverage. Functional, but the limitations of that approach were becoming clear.

This would be the last version before the project went dark and was eventually reimagined entirely.

Early July 2025

StormSync v2.0.0 — v2.0.2

A significant rewrite. v2.0.0 introduced a redesigned interface and improved alert parsing. The 2.0.x patch releases followed quickly, fixing edge cases and improving stability.

Early June 2025

StormSync v1.0.1 — v1.2.5

Where it started. The first versions of StormSync were built as a general-purpose NWS alert monitor — pulling from public weather APIs, covering all alert types and all phenomena across the country.

Releases came quickly through the 1.x line, each one iterating on the core monitoring loop.