Met Office 'threat to life' hot weather alerts accidentally sent to phones

Severe weather alerts warning of a "significant threat to life" appeared on phones across the UK due to a testing error, the Met Office has said.

Notifications warned of severe weather events including high temperatures, snow, ice and rain in different parts of the country on Thursday. The test alerts, issued by a third party aggregator, were not intended to be public facing.

Some warnings told recipients to "take action immediately" but also included description text that referred to it being a test warning.

The Met Office, which is responsible for weather warnings in the UK, confirmed the test warnings had now been removed.

Information contained in the alerts explained that the Met Office test warnings had been issued via a meteorological aggregator that sends weather alerts to a number of places including Apple devices.

It is thought that the testing error occurred during this aggregation process.

A Met Office spokesperson said: "We are aware of an issue where some test weather warnings were displaying on some websites and apps, we’ve worked with partners to ensure these test warnings have now been removed.

"We’re sorry for any inconvenience, there are currently no Met Office Severe Weather Warnings in force as of 14:00 Thursday 28 November."

It is unclear how many people received the warnings, but many posted on X to say they had seen them.