NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio Information NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio is the "voice" of the National Weather Service. NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) broadcasts National Weather Service warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day. NWR is provided as a public service by the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NWR network has more than 720 stations in the 50 states and adjacent coastal waters, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and U.S. Pacific Territories. NWR broadcasts typically reach about 40 miles away from the transmitter.The broadcast range depends upon a number of factors including signal strength, terrain, quality of your weather radio, and current weather conditions.
Severe Weather Watch and Warning Alerts - 24 hours a day Weather radios equipped with a special alarm tone feature will sound an alert and give you immediate information about a life threatening situation. During an emergency, NWS personnel will interrupt routine weather programming and send out the special tone that activates weather radios in the listening area. With the implementation of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME), it is now possible to program certain weather radios to sound an alert for only the counties desired in a specific NWR's broadcast area. The owner of a NWR with SAME technology would program the desired county into the radio. It will then alert the user to weather and all hazards emergencies only for the specific county programmed.** All Weather, All the Time
NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio is not just for emergencies. It is a round-the-clock source of weather reports and information to help you prepare for the day ahead. Each NWS office tailors its broadcast to suit local needs. Routine programming is repeated every few minutes and consists of the local and regional forecast as well as the latest regional weather conditions. Additional information including river stages and climatic information is also provided. Additional Information:
**Older (non-SAME) NWR receivers without SAME capability would alert for emergencies anywhere within the coverage area of the NWR transmitter, even though the emergency could be well away from the listener. The SAME technology can eliminate this appearance of over warning. |