WARN believes NOAA weather alert receivers provide the best option for personal severe weather warning. For homes and businesses, they are much more effective than depending on outdoor warning sirens. Outdoor warning sirens are only effective when/where they can be heard.
SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) receivers allow you to program which counties for which you wish to receive alerts. Even though they are more expensive, we highly recommend this newer style radio. Since you only receive alerts of interest to you, fewer people tend to get complacent and turn them off.
Some people have stated that they can't find the codes for area counties. (It's also important to set your radio to the frequency (channel) that covers your area with the best signal. Transmitters only send alerts for counties in their coverage area.) Here is a list of local SAME county codes:
For counties not listed here, the National Weather Service maintains a list of all codes for the United States and its territories at:
