--- title: "How BeAware alerts work: sources, matching, and timing" url: "https://bepreparedsolutions.co/help/beaware/how-alerts-work" description: "BeAware checks FEMA and Weather Service alerts every 2 minutes and emails you when one covers a saved address and meets your urgency level." source: "BePrepared Solutions" --- Explainer # How BeAware alert notifications work We watch official feeds around the clock and email you when an alert covering one of your saved addresses meets your urgency level. Updated October 7, 2026 BeAware reads FEMA and National Weather Service alerts every 2 minutes and compares each one with the places you've saved. When an alert covers one of them and meets your urgency level, you get an email. Extreme alerts can reach your phone by text or WhatsApp as well. Outages are listed on the dashboard but send nothing yet. Most of what BeAware sees never turns into a message. It lands on your dashboard, and only what clears the bar you set reaches your inbox. ## Which feeds can reach your inbox? Two kinds of events send messages today: official warnings and environmental readings. Everything else BeAware follows stays on the dashboard. - **Official warnings** come from [IPAWS, FEMA's national alerting system](https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/integrated-public-alert-warning-system), and from the Weather Service's own feed. BeAware polls both on a 2-minute cycle. They email you, and an Extreme one can also text you. - **Environmental readings** cover smoke and air quality, river levels at nearby gauges, and the distance to active wildfires. They refresh about once an hour. Each one emails you once it hits the level you picked. - **Utility outages** appear on your Home page and the dashboard. Both outage rows on the Alert Settings page are tagged "Messages coming soon," and whatever you choose there is kept for later. - **Digital infrastructure** means outages at internet providers, phone carriers, cloud hosts, and apps. BeAware checks them every 5 minutes and lists them on the Digital tab. Their rows on the settings page carry no tag, yet they don't send messages either. - **Local safety news** fills the News tab. It never sends a message. Even inside your area, not every official warning qualifies. Only real, current ones pass. Tests and exercises are dropped, as are warnings the agency rates Minor or leaves unrated. A cancellation never triggers a message. Neither does a warning that has already run out. ## How is an alert matched to your address? By its drawn area when it has one, and by county when it doesn't. Some warnings come with a boundary drawn on a map. You are matched if a saved address falls inside it. Most arrive with a list of counties instead, and then any saved address in a listed county qualifies. A drawn boundary always takes priority. If it leaves your home out, BeAware won't fall back on your county, even when the warning lists it. So a storm warning drawn over the far end of your county won't email you. A warning addressed to your whole state behaves alike. It emails you only when it also lists your county or draws an area over your home. The dashboard looks wider on purpose. Its Emergency tab shows anything mapped within 25 miles, anything for your county, and anything statewide. Turning on **Wider area** stretches that to neighboring counties up to about 150 miles away. That's why the dashboard can show a warning that never becomes an email. [The monitoring dashboard guide](https://bepreparedsolutions.co/help/beaware/monitoring-dashboard) covers each tab in detail. Outages are judged by distance. Any outage within 1 mile counts as near. So does a bigger one within 5 miles, once 500 customers or more are out. A county-level outage report counts if your home lies within its area and 5% or more of that utility's customers there are affected. These rules set what Home and the dashboard mark as nearby. Each saved place is checked separately. If one warning covers two of your places, you still get a single email about it. That email names a place it is near, for example "near Home." ## Urgency comes from the issuing agency The agency behind an alert also grades it: Extreme, Severe, Moderate, or Minor. BeAware keeps that grade exactly as issued. Your **Urgency** choice on the Alert Settings page sets the lowest grade that emails you. - **Critical only:** Extreme alerts alone, the life-safety kind. - **Recommended**, the default: Severe alerts as well, so warnings like tornadoes and flash floods are covered. By the page's own estimate, that means a handful of messages a year in most areas. - **Everything:** Moderate alerts too, which takes in many advisories. Minor and unrated alerts stay off your inbox at every setting. Switching a category off stops its emails, though it stays visible on the dashboard. [Setting up alerts](https://bepreparedsolutions.co/help/beaware/set-up-alerts) walks through every control. One detail is easy to miss. With **Fine-tune individual alerts** open, the urgency picker disappears, but your last choice keeps working. ## Email always, phone messages for the worst Every BeAware account gets email. Messages arrive from "BePrepared Solutions" at the address on your account. Texts and WhatsApp are reserved for Extreme alerts, whichever urgency you pick. Turning them on happens under **Delivery** on Alert Settings: verify your phone there and agree to the consent wording. A number verified elsewhere, such as your Profile, doesn't count. A chip showing a lock and "coming soon" means that channel hasn't opened for your account yet. Email carries on regardless. A text names up to three alerts, worst first, and links to your dashboard. If a text or WhatsApp message can't be sent, BeAware emails that alert instead, unless an email about it has already gone. **Quiet hours** pause non-Extreme phone messages overnight, 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. The switch starts on. Email isn't affected, and Extreme alerts are exempt. Since phone messages are Extreme-only today, the pause rarely has anything to hold. ## Why do several alerts arrive in one email? Because BeAware holds less urgent alerts for a few minutes so related ones can travel together. A fast-moving storm can produce a string of warnings, and one email is easier to act on than five. - **Extreme:** no wait. Feeds are polled and new alerts sorted on 2-minute cycles, so these usually leave within minutes. - **Severe:** a pause of about 5 minutes. - **Moderate:** a pause of about 15 minutes. If an Extreme alert lands while others are paused, everything goes out together immediately. An alert that ends during its pause is dropped, so you never get a warning that is already over. Inside the email, each alert shows its grade, the saved place it's near, any instructions from the agency, and when it ends. When several share one email, the subject leads with how many there are. Revisions follow their own rule. Agencies reissue warnings as conditions change, and a reissue that keeps the same grade sends nothing new. A jump to Extreme reaches you at once. A smaller step up, like Moderate to Severe, sends only when several hours have gone by since you last heard about it. A brand-new warning, even within the same storm, is its own alert with its own message. There's a daily cap on alert email too. After it's reached, non-Extreme alerts are held until the count restarts at midnight UTC. Extreme alerts ignore the cap. ## Readings follow a different rhythm Smoke, river, and fire emails come from measurements, not from agency warnings. You set a trigger for each one from the dashboard's gear, which opens Dashboard settings. The **Environmental alerts** section there lists all three. Caution is the default, and **Never alert me** turns one off. Alert Settings itself only offers a **Panel** link back to the dashboard. [What each reading level means](https://bepreparedsolutions.co/help/beaware/why-monitoring) gives the numbers behind each step. Once a reading hits your chosen level, one email goes out. A second waits until the reading moves up a level and several hours have passed. After about 4 hours spent below your level, a new rise starts over with a fresh email. These emails have a separate daily cap, which never holds back a Danger reading. When the air quality source goes silent, BeAware pauses air alerts. A gap in that data never counts as all clear. ## A month of sent and held alerts The **Recent alerts** list at the bottom of Alert Settings keeps 30 days of emergency alert email. Alongside what was sent, it shows what BeAware chose to hold, with reasons like "Below your urgency level" or "Daily limit reached." Environmental emails aren't part of it. When one specific alert never arrived, [why a particular alert didn't reach you](https://bepreparedsolutions.co/help/beaware/why-no-alert) walks through the causes. If nothing reaches you at all, use [the missing-alerts checklist](https://bepreparedsolutions.co/help/tasks/not-getting-alerts) instead. An empty list is the normal state. As the page says, monitoring runs around the clock, and you'll hear when something meets your bar. BeAware alerts are supplemental. Never rely on any single service, ours included, as your only source of warnings. Steps not working for you? [Contact us](https://bepreparedsolutions.co/contact) and tell us which guide you were following, or [browse the Help Center](https://bepreparedsolutions.co/help). --- _Guidance here is general and cannot account for your circumstances. In an active emergency, official instructions from local authorities take precedence over anything published by BePrepared Solutions._