I use StormSiren to monitor both my local area in Texas and where my family lives in Tennessee. I have developed a strategy that takes advantage of the filtering capability of StormSiren to avoid annoying family members with useless notifications.

The general concept is that for a given email address (or other end alert device) that two devices configuration instances are created. The first device configuration for the email address will alert only on warnings and watches for the counties that surround where my family lives.

In this case it would be the counties that surround Warren County, Tennessee (Cannon, Coffee, Grundy, Sequatchie, Van Buren, White, and Dekalb). A second device would be created that would alert on all available weather types (statement, advisory, forecast, watch, and warnings) for the county and city of where they live (McMinnville,TN and Warren, TN).

The result is a configuration that looks similar to following for one of my family members:

[5]
device = email
to = ckfreeze@example.com
alert = watch,warning
areas = Cannon,TN:Coffee,TN:Grundy,TN:Sequatchie,TN:Van Buren,TN:White,TN:Dekalb,TN

[6]
device = email
to = ckfreeze@example.com
alert = watch,warning,forecast,statement,advisory
areas = McMinnville,TN:Warren,TN

For me or my wife, the configuration looks similar to following:

[8]
device = email
to = rcfreeze@example.com
alert = forecast,statement,advisory
areas = Rockwall,TX

[9]
device = email
to = rcfreeze@example.com
alert = watch,warning
areas = Rockwall,TX:Collin,TX:Dallas,TX:Kaufman,TX:Hunt,TX

We also do something similar with our MythTV PVRs. In the main familyroom, we like all the alerts from both the Tennessee and Texas areas. In the master bedroom though, we only really care about warnings and watches for our local area. In this instance, the configuration looks like the following:

[3]
device = mythtv
to = master-bedroom.example.com:6948
wait_time = 20
alert = watch,warning
areas = Rockwall,TX:Collin,TX:Dallas,TX:Kaufman,TX:Hunt,TX
[15]
device = mythtv
to = familyroom.example.com:6948
wait_time = 5
alert = forecast,statement,advisory,watch,warning
areas = Rockwall,TX:Collin,TX:Dallas,TX:Kaufman,TX:Hunt,TX:McMinnville,TN:Warren,TN:Cannon,TN:Coffee,
TN:Grundy,TN:Sequatchie,TN:Van Buren,TN:White,TN:Dekalb,TN