Its only the beginning of March and we’re already well into the spring severe weather season of 2009. Tornados in Georgia, snow across the south, what’s next! No one knows for sure but one thing is certain, you don’t want to be without a Weather Alert Radio when the weather turns nasty.

NOAA Weather Radio, or NWR, is a free service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the United States, adjacent waters, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa & Guam. The service operates 24 hours a day broadcasing over 940 transmitters around the country. Weather watches and warnings, forecasts, and other hazard information as well as non-weather information including national security and AMBER Alerts are the mainstay of NWR programming.

The service has become critical in disseminating weather watch and warning information, especially in rural and less densly populated areas. Its become even more useful in the past few years with the introduction of SAME or Specific Area Message Encoding, you can program most receivers to remain on standby until an event is issued for your area.

There are many manufactures of Weather Alert Radios, even many different forms. Lots of FRS and CB radios now include a NWR Weather Alert option. Programming the radios is usually pretty straight forward, the hardest part being finding the right SAME code for your area. Most if not all manufacturers include a list of SAME codes in their manual and on their websites.

I’ve gone through eBay and picked out a few units that are available and listed them on the Weather Alert Radio page. Feel free to look them over and pick one that works for you. If you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them, just drop a note in the comments below.

Thanks for stopping by!

- Thom

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.