The University of Kentucky has launched a new tool to help people stay on top of severe weather conditions in the state.

The Weather Alert app was originally designed for farmers, but now all Kentuckians can download it for free on their smartphone.

We spoke to one of the meteorologists behind the app about the features.

This app has two main goals to heighten awareness during extreme weather conditions and secondly, empower Kentucky farming operations with valuable insights for their production and management related decisions.

We have a major severe weather situation on our hands unfolding today and the rest of this week with extreme rainfall in the in the forecast.

We have tornadoes in the forecast tonight.

And having this app, is another source for receiving morning information from the National Weather Service.

There's several features on the app.

The first one, you pull up the app, you download it to your phone, you get hourly and daily data, pretty similar information of what you're getting on any other weather app.

Now, we included a high resolution radar, and you can be as much of a weather nerd as you want to be on this app.

You can add tornado watch boxes, severe thunderstorm watch boxes.

You can overlay the radar with warning polygon.

So if we do have a tornado warning issued, you can see that polygon overlaid on the radar map with precipitation.

Something unique with this radar.

You can also see lightning strikes in the area.

And you can see the difference between cloud to ground and cloud to cloud lightning.

You don't have to pay extra for the lightning feature.

You don't have to pay anything extra at all on this app.

It's all made available to you for free, through Kentucky Extension.

But in addition, you will get warning alerts sent straight to your phone if you are under a tornado warning.

Buzz, buzz beep beep.

You're under a tornado warning.

Take shelter.

Same thing goes for wind advisory like we saw today.

Same thing goes for a freeze warning that we may potentially see next week with these colder conditions on the way.

If there is lightning in your area, you will get an alert that lightning is within 15 miles of your location.

That can be GPS based, or you could pick your own location on the app.

So taking all that and put it together.

We're trying to keep Kentuckians safe, especially in these extreme weather situations.

It's another source for getting warning information out to the public.

What a helpful tool, Dixon emphasizes.

It's important to have multiple ways of getting warning information, and that everyone needs to have a NOAA weather radio in their home to find out more about the Weather Alert app and where it's available for download.

Go to the website that you see on the screen.

We certainly are taking note of it as well.