Pennington County Emergency Management (as part of the annual Coordinated Alert and Warning Drill) will send a WEA (Wireless Emergency Alert) test to ensure that this notification system will reliably deliver an alert and warning to the public. This test message will contain TEST, EXERCISE, DRILL or similar wording. The 2025 annual Alert and Warning Drill will occur on Wednesday, March 26 at 1:30 PM. To receive this message on your device, be sure "test" messages are enabled.

Mobile phones ship from the manufacturer with the test alerts option "DISABLED." The consumer or user of the device must enable this option to receive WEA test messages. Most iPhones and Android phones have a test feature that can be enabled. Some older mobile phones do not include a test option and cannot receive tests.

Enabling or disabling tests does not affect reception of an actual emergency alert. Phones are enabled to an “ON” status when they are shipped to a user by the manufacturer.

To ENABLE the WEA test messages on your device, change these settings:

Double-check this feature annually, ahead of the drill to ensure that your device updates have not changed this setting to be "off" through regular updates.