Alert Systems

Take full advantage of the no-cost tools that can help you stay prepared and alert!

Register for local and national alert systems which alert you of critical information for situations happening in your area. You can choose areas based on your residency, where you work, or where you are at the time if you choose to opt-in to geographical alerts. 

Williamson County Emergency Alert System

Get alerted about emergencies by signing up for the county Emergency Alert System! This system enables us to quickly provide you with critical information in events of severe weather, unexpected road closures, missing persons and other non-emergency community alerts. 

This  system is shared between the City of Franklin, City of Brentwood, City of Spring Hill, City of Fairview, Town of Nolensville, and the Town of Thompsons Station.   By signing up you will automatically begin receiving emergency alerts. Messages can go out to only those who live in the geographic location of the incident, or out to the entire county, so it’s important to register with your proper home address! If you want to receive an alert based on your location of work or for a family member who lives in a separate household, you will need to register for those addresses separately. Sign up here.

Outdoor Warning System

The Williamson County Department of Public Safety has implemented a software system that specifically identifies and automatically activates outdoor warning sirens in an effort to reduce unnecessary storm notifications to people who are not in a danger area.

The software automatically activates the outdoor warning sirens, which some may call "tornado sirens," within a warning polygon defined by the National Weather Service, reducing unnecessary notifications for parts of the county that are far from the affected area.

Instead of issuing warnings by county, a local NOAA National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office can narrow the focus on a portion of the county that has the greatest threat for being affected by severe weather. The warned area is defined by latitude and longitude coordinates and depicted by polygons on a weather radar map. 

Using Doppler radar algorithms, the NWS also can calculate the movement of severe storms. As a warning polygon shifts, additional sirens may be activated based on the continued progress of the storm.

Williamson County tests the outdoor warning system that is tested the first Saturday of each month at 1 pm. Outdoor sirens are only intended to be heard while outside, so it is important to have additional alert systems in place for when you are indoors.

The map below shows the locations of the county's sirens and their coverage areas.