I live in an area where tornados and severe thunderstorms are a regular occurrence. Staying aware of these threats should be a basic part of life but used to entail either being glued to a weather broadcast on TV or constantly checking radar/warnings on a website. Sure, there are sirens outdoors but they can only be heard indoors under ideal conditions. However advances in weather radios and a new tool for iPhones provide a much better proactive notification solutions.
For homes the top solution is a Weather Radio with S.A.M.E. technology. These radios will “wake up” and sound an alarm if a threat occurs and, most importantly, allow you to specify exactly which dangerous conditions will generate the audible alarm. This is key because without it minor alarms can wake you in the middle of the night for no good reason at which point you turn it off an lose the value of having one in the first place. We’ve had one for a few years now and it has been reliable in alerting us including several times when we were unaware severe weather was a risk.
More recently I discovered an iPhone app call Weather Alert USA that does much the same thing. It costs a few dollars but is worth it since it means you will get alerts even when running errands, at a sporting event and so forth.
It’s always good to keep your eyes and ears open when weather threats are around but these tools help ensure you and your family are not caught off-guard.