2021 Severe Weather Awareness: Week 1 - Day 6: Programming Your NOAA Weather Radio

Like we talked about earlier this week, the baseline way of receiving alerts in your home, business, school, or place of worship should be a NOAA Weather Radio. These radios run off a freely available broadcast frequency system that automatically carries watches and warnings issued by the National Weather Service. This is what will sound the loud alarm in your home that will wake you up in the middle of the night when a warning is issued and you are in danger. Over the past couple of decades, these weather radios have been capable of being programmed for your county or a set of counties that you would like to monitor for alerts. This technology is called S.A.M.E., Specific Area Message Encoding. Programming your weather radio isn't difficult if you have the right instructions, but can be tricky doing it yourself the first time. Below is a video shared by Midland Radio Corporation, the manufacturing company of the most popular weather radio line, that goes into step by step detail about how to program your NOAA Weather Radio.

Below is a link to a website from the National Weather Service where you can search for the correct transmitter frequency closest to you that serves your county, separated by state.

https://www.weather.gov/nwr/Maps