ACU-RITE 8510 is a weather alert radio that receives encoded civil and weather emergency alert messages from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Radio broadcast towers. It uses Specific Area Message Encoding (S.A.M.E) to identify specific areas, like a county or localized area of a state, which limits the occurrence of “false alarms”. The ACU-RITE 8510 receives all 7 NOAA weather alert channels and when an official alert is received, the radio will automatically switch on and you will hear the tone and audio voice broadcast.