What's a good Weather radio with alarm

[spidey07]

Always loved storms and watching them, even thought about going to class and becoming a weather spotter. In the severe weather statement/warning it said "make sure to set weather radios to automatically alarm". I take it you can get a radio that listens to the broadcasts and have it alarm/alert you to warnings? Is it satellite or regular terrestrial bands? There were some tornadoes in the area last night and it'd be good to have something wake you up than just the sirens. Anybody ever look at something like this?

 

[bobdole369]

Its 162mhz VHF band - normal NOAA weather radio.

They have a shit ton of weather alert radios that listen to the band and sound a siren when the system sends out a coded alert.

http://www.weather.gov/nwr/

Look at your local "skywarn" group for more info, including becoming a spotter.

I use a ham radio with extended receive (Kenwood TH-F6a) but thats a full-featured tri-band amateur radio, a little much for just getting a buzzer when tornado warning goes off.

Here's what you want.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=3523686

 

[spidey07]

Thanks! It would be pretty cool to have one of those weather stations you see at real small airports that print out the warnings/reports.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Just a heads up, the radioshack branded radios are IMO not extremely reliable. I owned one a few years ago, worked fine until it got a "Check OP" msg that wouldn't go away.


Bought another one, worked fine for two weeks before again - Check OP


I ended up ordering one of these - very simple but has the downside of not being able to turn off annoying alerts like thunderstorm warnings. This is for a weekend place, so it doesn't matter to me if it goes off unnecessarily as long as it works.

http://www.amazon.com/Midland-WR-100...8913665&sr=1-1

 

[spidey07]

Well looks like the radio would have been good last night. There was a tornado less than 5 miles from my place and they failed to sound the sirens after NWS issued a tornado warning.

 

[Scouzer]

part of my job is weather observation, it's pretty easy with practice.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

http://www.amazon.com/Midland-WR-300.../dp/B00009V2YV


Good because not only can you restrict what counties it alarms for, but also what type of issue (i.e. flood, blizzard, tornado, etc.).

We use ours strictly for tornados, so I block all thunderstorm and other non-critical warnings.

 

[spidey07]

http://www.amazon.com/Midland-WR-300.../dp/B00009V2YV


Good because not only can you restrict what counties it alarms for, but also what type of issue (i.e. flood, blizzard, tornado, etc.).

We use ours strictly for tornados, so I block all thunderstorm and other non-critical warnings.

I could see that as a must have feature. I don't want it alarming for just a severe storm.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

I could see that as a must have feature. I don't want it alarming for just a severe storm.

indeed. We had a cheaper model that lasted 2 weeks before we unplugged in and found this one.

 

[boomerang]

Around us, NOAA has consolidated services and their broadcasts now cover a very large area. This means that during the early summer months (tornado and severe storm season for us) the weather radio is going off almost constantly for areas that are nowhere near us. To top it off, there are regular broadcasts that have nothing to do with severe weather and along with those it goes off for lake warnings. We're sixty miles West of the nearest great lake and the weather moves from West to East here. We don't need to be hearing maritime warnings.

All these superfluous warnings drive my wife and I about insane. I unplugged it and try to remember to plug it in if the weather looks bad.

Edit: I just saw Mikey's post, maybe our unit is too old and a newer one would work the way we'd like it too. It is an inexpensive RS model.

 

[spidey07]

indeed. We had a cheaper model that lasted 2 weeks before we unplugged in and found this one.

Received it today. Very nice. Loving it already.

The sirens didn't go off for the tornado warning, and subsequent tornado a few miles from me. This would have picked it up as the warning was sent from NWS, but our sirens didn't sound. Something about SAME data burst and setup of the receivers is suspected. A city of a million, a tornado at 4:30 AM, and no sirens.

 

[spidey07]

Around us, NOAA has consolidated services and their broadcasts now cover a very large area. This means that during the early summer months (tornado and severe storm season for us) the weather radio is going off almost constantly for areas that are nowhere near us. To top it off, there are regular broadcasts that have nothing to do with severe weather and along with those it goes off for lake warnings. We're sixty miles West of the nearest great lake and the weather moves from West to East here. We don't need to be hearing maritime warnings.

All these superfluous warnings drive my wife and I about insane. I unplugged it and try to remember to plug it in if the weather looks bad.

Edit: I just saw Mikey's post, maybe our unit is too old and a newer one would work the way we'd like it too. It is an inexpensive RS model.

I've been reading up on this SAME stuff. It only picks up on your Specific Area Message Encoding and this model lets you select what to alarm on and which specific area. See here.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/

 

[bobdole369]

and they failed to sound the sirens after NWS issued a tornado warning.

You guys are lucky to HAVE sirens. We don't. Granted we don't get F-4 monsters or anything but we do get f-2's and a half dozen f-1's and 0's every year. They still kill people.

We are typically known for our hurricanes but sfl does spin up a good tornado. Usually the torrential tropical rain masks the threat from view so its even worse.