GASTONIA — Gastonia has stopped telephoning residents with weather alerts after dozens of citizens complained about the unrequested phone calls.

The Gaston Gazette reported Thursday the computerized calls were intended to give residents advance warnings of serious weather events.

But residents complained the calls were coming in too often and that the text-to-voice messages recorded by the National Weather Service were hard to understand.

One resident complained she was awakened just before 11 p.m. only to be told in a garbled-sounding message that an earlier weather alert had been cancelled. It was her third alert that day.

Gastonia has long warned about non-routine emergencies through automated telephone calls.

The new weather alert system began June 1 and involved about 27,000 phone lines.