What We Collect
AlertGauge is designed with privacy as a core principle. We collect minimal data:
- Pseudonymous visitor counts — We track aggregate visitor milestones using a token derived from your IP address and stored in Upstash Redis. The raw IP address is not written to Redis. The token is used to avoid counting the same visitor repeatedly, not to build a user profile.
- Approximate location lookup (automatic) — If you arrive without a shared, saved, or manually selected location, Vercel, our hosting provider, derives an approximate country, region or state, city, latitude, and longitude from the public IP address already used to serve your request. Vercel adds those values to the x-vercel-ip-country, x-vercel-ip-country-region, x-vercel-ip-city, x-vercel-ip-latitude, and x-vercel-ip-longitude request headers. AlertGauge reads them only to choose the initial nearby weather view. AlertGauge does not send your IP address to a separate geolocation service and does not persist or cache the geolocation headers or their result.
- Selected location (optional) — When you enter a location or allow geolocation, its coordinates are sent to AlertGauge and the public weather providers needed to answer your request. Your current or saved location is stored in your browser for convenience. We do not build a server-side location history or associate weather requests with an account.
- Browser preferences — Your theme selection (Night Ops, Day Ops, Red Ops) and saved locations are stored in your browser's localStorage.
We do not ask for email addresses, names, passwords, payment information, or an account profile. Network IP addresses are processed only for the automatic location lookup and aggregate visitor count described above. We do not use third-party tracking cookies or analytics scripts.
How We Use Data
- To fetch weather forecasts from the National Weather Service for your specified location
- To choose an initial nearby weather view from the automatic, city-level Vercel location headers when no other location is available
- To track aggregate site traffic milestones for internal use only
- To remember your display preferences between visits
Weather Data Sources
AlertGauge processes data from the National Weather Service (NWS), NOAA ACIS climatology, and AviationWeather.gov PIREP reports. Our interpretation models analyze this public data to surface decision-relevant patterns such as flash freeze risk, livestock cold stress, and power outage probability.
Important: AlertGauge provides supplemental weather intelligence. Always follow official NWS watches and warnings. AlertGauge is not a substitute for professional meteorological advice. Use your own judgment when making weather-dependent decisions.
Data Storage
- Server-side: Pseudonymous visitor hashes and canonical weather-event state may be stored in Upstash Redis. Event state contains no user or device identifier and no raw request coordinates.
- Client-side: Location, theme, and preference data are stored in your browser. Private event acknowledgment and last-seen versions use browser IndexedDB and are not uploaded.
- Weather process cache: Weather data is cached temporarily by data-specific TTL. The shared process-memory cache is capped at 512 live entries, and expired entries are swept on cache access. The separate in-flight request tracker is capped at 256 keys; additional unique requests execute without being retained until capacity is available. Some cache and in-flight keys contain rounded request coordinates. The keys and cached weather data are not associated with a user, account, or profile.
- Automatic approximate location: Vercel's geolocation request headers and the result read by AlertGauge are never written to an AlertGauge database, server process cache, browser storage, CDN cache, or service-worker cache.
Third-Party Services
- National Weather Service API — Weather forecast data for the requested coordinates (weather.gov). Public federal data.
- NOAA ACIS — Historical climatology data for unusualness scoring.
- Upstash — Anonymized visitor counting and canonical weather-event memory. Data encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Vercel — Hosting platform. Vercel receives your network request and derives approximate country, region or state, city, latitude, and longitude from your public IP address. AlertGauge reads Vercel's request headers for the initial weather view but does not persist or cache those values.
Your Rights
Since AlertGauge does not require an account, there is typically no account record to request or delete. You can clear locally stored locations, preferences, and private attention memory by clearing this site's browser data.
For questions, contact us at privacy@alertgauge.com.