Weather Alert Radio

If you don't already have a weather alert radio I would suggest that you get one. It gives you piece of mind and can literally save your life. In the event of a weather emergency we don't all live or work in an area where the weather sirens can be heard or we sleep soundly enough that the siren wouldn't wake us up anyway. In one personal instance I was living in Florida when a storm was so severe that it blocked the sound of the siren that I could usually hear quite well.

There are several manufacturers of weather alert radios, the one I currently have is the Midland WR 100B which I paid $24.95 for. The weather has battery backup in case the power fails, it has both alert tones and the radio comes on to broadcast the warning from the National Weather Service and there is a display on the screen that tells you what the watch or warning is about.

The new S.A.M.E. coding lets you even set your radio to the specific county you live in. You can get more information from the National Weather Service web page located here http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/nwrrcvr.htm

The SAME code for Warren County, Ohio is 039165 and that is broadcast from the transmitters in Covington, Kentucky (KIH42 on 162.550) and Dayton, Ohio (WXJ46 on 162.475).

For those of you who have scanner radios and would like minute by minute coverage of the weather from amateur radio operators, I have listened for years on my scanner to the Weather Amateur Weather Network which broadcasts in times of severe weather on 146.880 and 147.090. You can check out the WARN web page at http://www.warn.org/