Si4707 Hookup Guide
jimblom 
What's Weather Band
Weather radio (known as national weather radio or NWR) is a nationwide, 24/7 weather forecasting, watching, and alert system. Weather band transmissions are frequency-modulated (FM) at one of seven VHF frequencies (in MHz): 162.400, 162.425, 162.450, 162.475, 162.500, 162.500, 162.525, or 162.550. With broadcast stations all over the country, upwards of 97% of the U.S. population is covered by NWR.
The radio broadcasts usually consist of an automated voice (either Donna, Tom, or Javier) speechifying a weather forecast. They'll inform you of current temperatures, wind conditions, precipitation, etc., and they'll give you an outlook for the coming hours and days. The weather-band-radio-robot-voices are really very relaxing, almost hypnotic.
And remember NOAA Weather Radios (very dramatically) SAVE LIVES!!!
What's SAME?
One particularly critical job of NWR is alerting us to immediate weather emergencies. Those emergency weather alerts are reinforced by Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME). SAME is a digital code transmitted under cover of the normal weather radio audio broadcasts. SAME messages are short, but they convey important information like what weather event triggered the alert (winter storm warning, tornado warning, hurricane, etc.) and the area affected.
The SAME messages are accompanied by a lovely 10 second 1050Hz tone, alerting listeners to the incoming warning message.
The Si4707 is fully capable of interfacing with SAME messages and the 1050 Hz tone. Want the radio to turn on only when an alert is incoming? Or blink an LED when catastrophic weather is headed your way? It's possible thanks to SAME.
For more information on National Weather Radio head over to NOAA's homepage.