Contact:  Barry Reichenbaugh             FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                         8/19/97

The National Weather Service announced today an improvement to its service of broadcasting severe weather warnings to the public through its network of NOAA Weather Radio transmitters. A new generation of weather radio receivers, using NWS-developed technology, will enable listeners to screen out weather alarms that do not apply to them.

"We want to reduce the Boy Who Cried Wolf' syndrome by targeting our alarms for specific segments of the listening area," said Louis J. Boezi, NWS deputy director for modernization. "This new warning procedure is a breakthrough because it lets NOAA Weather Radio listeners screen out the severe weather alarms they don't want to hear. If listeners are awakened at 3 a.m. for a severe weather warning 75 miles away, they may eventually tune out all together. We don't want that to happen."

NOAA Weather Radio, the "Voice of the National Weather Service," broadcasts official NWS warnings and hazard information and local forecasts 24 hours a day over a growing national network of more than 450 transmitters. Routine forecast information is updated every one to three hours, and NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts are repeated about every five minutes.

During an emergency, National Weather Service forecasters interrupt local NOAA Weather Radio programming and send out an alarm tone that activates NOAA Weather Radio receivers within the entire listening area. Since transmitters typically reach people within a range of hundreds of square miles, technical limitations have led to the appearance of "overwarning" for some severe weather events.

Boezi said a new generation of NOAA Weather Radio receivers have a Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) feature that allows consumers to choose only the official NWS watches and warnings they want. Older NOAA Weather Radio receivers continue to work, but these older receivers do not allow listeners to screen out weather service alarms for individual counties.

Boezi praised the efforts of the consumer electronics industry to bring these new NOAA Weather Radio receivers to the marketplace.

"We hope that manufacturers will develop new car radios and citizen band radios capable of picking up SAME-coded alerts," said Boezi. "Since the SAME codes are fully compatible with the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Alert System, we also hope someday soon to see new television sets, pagers, cellular phones and other electronic devices capable of receiving SAME-coded alerts. There's a huge market out there for devices that can be pre-set to receive locally-broadcast hazard warnings and alert people any time of the day or night when they may only have minutes to react."

The first brand of the new SAME-capable receiver is sold by Radio Shack, and other brands of receivers with the SAME feature are expected to be sold by electronics manufacturers later this year.

Following a tornado that killed more than 20 people in a rural Alabama church on Palm Sunday in 1994, Vice President Al Gore set a goal to make NOAA Weather Radio receivers as common as smoke detectors in American homes and to extend the coverage provided by the NOAA Weather Radio transmitter network to 95 percent of the United States.

Since the Gore NOAA Weather Radio initiative began, the National Weather Service and other members of the Gore task force have been actively promoting public/private sector partnerships to provide the needed resources. More than 50 new weather radio transmitters have been installed since 1994 through grass roots partnerships combining resources of private enterprises, associations, and local, state and federal government agencies.

Arkwright Mutual Insurance Co. announced this week that it is investing $1.2 million to install 10,000 receivers into its customers' facilities for no charge. This will be the largest private investment in the NOAA Weather Radio network and will extend the service into a wide range of companies and organizations nationwide.

Broadcast range from most weather radio transmitters is approximately 40 miles. The effective range depends on terrain, quality of the receiver, and indoor/outdoor antennas. Before buying any NOAA Weather Radio receiver, consumers should make sure their area is covered by one of the transmitters.

Reporters seeking more information on NOAA Weather Radio or other aspects of the National Weather Service are invited to visit the NWS Public Affairs website at: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/pa