Why did my alert not fire, or fire twice?

On /alerts, press Preview now on the rule row. It checks that rule against the current forecast straight away and sends nothing and records nothing. It reads WOULD FIRE with the windows, CLEAR with the hours checked, or UNKNOWN with how many hours are missing. If it says WOULD FIRE and no email came, the cause is downstream: the email box, your plan, de-duplication or delivery. If it says CLEAR, the forecast does not breach the rule as written, which is the next thing to check. Preview ignores the email box, your plan and the seven-day memory, so it only tests the forecast side.

An alert needs two things on the site: a rule, and the box reading Email me when the forecast breaches this rule ticked. The box starts unticked on a new rule. A rule without it is still shown on /alerts and still works in Preview now, but the scheduled check skips it and nothing is sent. Open the pencil on the rule row to tick it. A rule saved by the agent does not tick it either. The same sheet holds the look-ahead, 1 to 72 hours, default 24, and the metric, comparison and threshold. Check that Gust or Mean speed and at or above or at or below are what you meant.

Email alerts start on Pro. On Starter you can keep a rule, but where plan limits apply ticking the email box is refused with a message that alerts start on Pro, and no alert email is sent. Where billing is switched on, an account whose paid plan has lapsed is also skipped. Ops and Enterprise count as paid. The check happens at send time, so an upgrade takes effect at the next scan. See which plan do I need.

Alerts compare the forecast at the 10 m model level only, hour by hour, with your threshold. They use the best-match model, three days of forecast and no ensemble odds. This has three effects. If your working height is not 10 m, the alert will not match the height-matched value on the fleet board or in the instrument. A STOP or WATCH lamp, which also uses ensemble odds, does not mean an email is due. And a breach more than about three days out cannot trigger, whatever look-ahead you set. For gust rules the alert reads the 10 m gust, for mean speed rules the 10 m mean speed.

If an hour has no forecast value it is counted as unknown. Unknown hours close any breach window that was open, and an alert only fires for breaches that were actually forecast. If the forecast source fails altogether the scan records an error, sends nothing and tries again at the next 30-minute scan. Preview shows the same thing as UNKNOWN with the number of missing hours.

Once an alert is sent, every hour of its breach window is marked for seven days, for that site. A window that is still running on a later scan does not fire again. A later window re-fires only if its start hour has not been marked. The memory belongs to the site, not the rule. If you change a threshold within seven days and the new rule breaches in hours that were already alerted, you get no new email for those hours. There is no email when a breach ends, and no reminder while it continues.

Two emails usually mean two different windows. The forecast may have a gap between two runs of high wind, and each run starts at an hour not yet marked. A window can also start earlier than before when the forecast changes, and the new earlier start hour is unmarked. If the first send failed, the hours are not marked, so the next scan sends again. The feed then shows a failed row followed by a sent one. Two sites give two emails. Check the feed against the emails to see which case it is.

The email comes from alerts@thewindagent.com, to the email on your account. Add it to your trusted senders list and check spam. The feed row for each alert shows sent, failed or skipped_no_key. The last two are red and mean no email reached you. Plan-skipped or already-alerted checks are not logged, so a missing alert with an empty feed is often one of those. If a rule with the box ticked on Pro still does not fire after Preview shows WOULD FIRE, contact us with the site, the rule and the time. You do not need to be signed in for the scan to run.