The County Will Call Your Phone in an Emergency. Only If You Told It Which Phone.
By The Magnolia Standard · August 14, 2026
The statistical peak of hurricane season is September 10. The window that produces almost all of the serious storms opened this month. Registration takes a few minutes and cannot be done later.
Montgomery County has a system for reaching residents when something is going wrong. It is called AlertMCTX, it is run by Montgomery County 9-1-1, and it sends notifications by phone call, text message, voice message and email. It works well. It has one requirement, which is that the county has to know how to reach you, and that only happens if you sign up.
Now is the specific week to do it, and the reason is arithmetic rather than alarm.
NOAA puts the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season on September 10, calculated by averaging where the storms fell across roughly the last hundred seasons. The hurricane center puts most of the season's activity between mid-August and mid-October, and the three months of August, September and October carry the load: 78 percent of all tropical storm days, 87 percent of the days with a Category 1 or 2 hurricane, and 96 percent of the days with a major hurricane of Category 3 or higher. We are in the front end of that stretch right now.
What AlertMCTX actually sends is broader than weather. The county describes its main use as reaching residents about an immediate emergency, including drawing the boundary of an evacuation or shelter-in-place area for something like a hazardous-material spill or a major gas leak. Alerts can also go out through social media.
That range is the argument for signing up even if you are relaxed about hurricanes. A gas leak two streets over does not care what month it is. Neither does wildfire, which this county dealt with last year. The Pauline Road Fire started in the Sam Houston National Forest in March 2025 and grew past 2,000 acres. Montgomery County filed a local disaster declaration on March 20, roughly 900 homes here were affected by evacuations, and residents were cleared to return once crews got the fire to 65 percent contained.
Sign-up does not run through the county's main website, which is where people usually go looking and give up. It runs through Montgomery County 9-1-1 at mc911.org, which hands off to a Smart911 registration form. If you would rather ask a person, the emergency communication district takes calls at 936-523-5911. Put in the phone you actually carry, not a landline you keep for the alarm system, and add an email you actually read. If your household has a second adult, register them separately rather than assuming one alert covers a family.
Separately, the county's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management publishes a preparedness app that tracks creek levels, road closures and burn bans. It is listed on mctx.org as ReadyMCTX and appears in both app stores under the name Montgomery County OHSEM. It is a companion to AlertMCTX, not a substitute for registering.
Two practical notes for people who live outside the city limits, which in this part of the county is most people. Your address may be in an unincorporated area with no city siren, no city notification system and no city text list, and the county is the only entity that will contact you at all. And if you moved in the last few years, whatever list you were on at your old address is a list for that address, not for you.
A registration form is a dull way to spend four minutes. It is also the only part of an emergency you get to do in advance, on a calm Friday, with the power on.
Sources: the Montgomery County Emergency Communication District's AlertMCTX page at mc911.org, for the system's operation by county 9-1-1, its delivery by telephone call, text message, voice message, email and social media, its use in defining evacuation and shelter-in-place areas for incidents such as a hazardous-material spill or major gas leak, the Smart911 registration form and the 936-523-5911 phone number; Montgomery County's emergency-management pages at mctx.org, for the ReadyMCTX app, which is listed in the Apple and Google app stores as Montgomery County OHSEM. The National Hurricane Center's tropical cyclone climatology gives the September 10 statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season and places most activity between mid-August and mid-October; the 78, 87 and 96 percent shares of tropical storm, Category 1 and 2, and major hurricane days are the National Hurricane Center's figures for August through October. The March 2025 Pauline Road Fire details, including the county's March 20 local disaster declaration, the fire's origin in the Sam Houston National Forest, its growth past 2,000 acres, the roughly 900 homes affected by evacuations and the return of evacuees at 65 percent containment, are from Community Impact and Houston Public Media reporting at the time. Registration procedures are as the county publishes them and can change. Corrections to newsroom@themagnoliastandard.news.