Speaking of alerts, webcams are useful for taking a look around your area, this one is my favourite, it's sited half a mile from where I live and looks across the Plymouth seafront, and I can glance at it to look for incoming hurricanes, UFO invasion fleets, Iranian subs disembarking special forces, tsunamis etc, this shot is from earlier this year-
I also regularly glance at the Dartmoor webcam, this is an old dusk shot, waddya say Sherlock?-
"On no account must Sir Hugo Baskerville be allowed to venture out onto the moor alone at night!"