NOAA
All Hazards
Weather Radio
Be
prepared for bad weather -- buy a NOAA Weather Radio!
Reporting a
Transmitter Problem
Do you have a comment about
the NWR broadcast from one of the transmitters listed below?
Baltimore-Washington Forecast Office broadcasts over 8 transmitters
Baltimore (Pikesville) MD -- KEC-83 on 162.400 MHz at 1000 Watts
Hagerstown (Clear Springs) MD -- WXM-42 on 162.475 MHz at 1000 Watts
Manassas (Independence Hill) VA -- KHB-36 on 162.55 MHz at 1000 Watts
Moorefield WV -- WXM-73 on 162.400 MHz at 500 Watts
Frostburg MD -- WXM-43 on 162.425 MHz at 300 Watts
Charlottesville (Covesville) VA -- KZZ-28 on 162.450 MHz at 1000 Watts
Washington DC -- WNG-736 on 162.450 MHz at 300 Watts (fully commissioned as of June 6, 2011)
Fredericksburg VA -- WZ-2527 on 162.425 MHz at 300 Watts
School NOAA Weather Radio Program & SETUP INFO!
Other page links to additional information
in table below
NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio receiver recalls:
For information on Weather Radio receiver recalls, go to the U.S.
Consumer Product Safety Commission web site and choose "Radios
Weather" in
the product Type list.
What's
new with NOAA Weather Radio?
NOAA Weather
Radio broadcasts weather information 24
hours a day, 7 days a week, direct from the National Weather
Service. It is the fastest way to receive weather warnings and information.
Tone-alert radios can wake you at night or alert you when television or
other radios are not turned on that hazardous weather is headed your way.
Weather radios should be in every home and facility much like smoke detectors
now are. NOAA Weather Radio saves lives!
When
does your office conduct its weekly NOAA Weather Radio alert test?
Every Wednesday
between 11 am and Noon is
the test of the NOAA Weather Radio tone-alert system and the
SAME alert system. This is true all across the country. You can
take your NOAA Weather Radio with you on vacations and business
trips. The test is received by the specially built NOAA Weather
Radios with the tone-alert and/or the SAME-alert features. People
purchasing these radios should use the test to ensure that their
radios are functioning properly. Tests of the NOAA Weather Radio
warning system will be canceled in situations were hazardous
weather and warnings are already present in your listening area
or are expected in the next couple hours.
What
is the status on new transmitters?
Update on the
Fredericksburg, VA site:
(Dec 2009)
The site on top of
Mary Washington Hospital is fully operational and ready for usage and
monitoring. Call sign is WZ 2527, power is 300 watts, and frequency is 162.425 MHz.
Thanks to all the hard work that has gone into making the new transmitter a
reality, including the Rappahannock Emergency Management Services (REMS) Council,
Mary Washington Hospital, and Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM)!
Answers
to other common questions:
- Streaming Audio:
There are sites that people post their live feeds to on the internet.
They
can be found by search engine. People have asked if we will could
make it so that they can listen to
our NOAA
Weather
Radio broadcasts over the internet. Some National Weather Service
Offices have made this available to internet users. The local
Baltimore-Washington Office uses the same web server on which the
NWS national web pages
resides. To set up streaming audio,
we would have to have a dedicated, live feed to the server. This
would
be extremely
expensive. If , at some time in the future, we move our web page
to a server located at our office, then we could do the internet
broadcast
and would be excited about providing that service.
- My Weather Radio no longer picks up your broadcast: The
majority of NOAA Weather Radios work flawlessly for the first few years.
Some radios using analog technology will stray with time from the frequency
that they are tuned to. You may need to decide whether to buy a new
radio or take this one in for repairs. However, other things could
also be causing this problem. Try moving the radio around to other
locations and see if it begins picking up the signal again. Nearby
development and other wireless systems in your area may be creating
some interference. You might need a stronger antenna or an exterior
antenna for your radio. If you decide that it is time to purchase a
new radio, see if the seller of the radio will let you test it at your
location and return it for a full refund if it does not work. Prices
for NOAA Weather Radios range from $17 to $90 and the reliability can
vary based on the quality of the radio, the distance you are from the
transmitter, and any other outside interference.
- My Weather Radio no longer picks up your alerts: Our
alert system is tested every Wednesday. Every once in a while there
may be a problem with the Wednesday test and people who monitor this
quickly alert us so we can correct it. So if you have only missed one
alert, it could be our problem, if you are missing multiple alerts,
it is your radio's problem and you should read #2 above. If you are
using a SAME radio (see discussion in NWR 2000 section above), it needs
a clear digital burst to decode the message and any interference may
limit your ability to receive it.
- Could there be a problem with your transmitter? Yes.
Our Manassas transmitter is closely monitored by our office and
people outside our office. We are usually quickly informed of any
problems.
However, it is harder for us to monitor our other transmitters.
If you listen to our Hagerstown, Moorefield, or Baltimore transmitters
and have noticed a slow deterioration in the broadcast quality
or a
problem that has lasted longer than several hours, then call
or e-mail us so we can look into it. Be sure to include where your
radio
is
(what town),
what transmitter or frequency you listen to, when the problem
developed and what it is, what model radio you are using, and a
phone number
that we can contact you at to help us solve the problem. One
problem that for brief periods will affect your reception if
you are more than 20 miles from the transmitter occurs whenever
the transmitter
powers down. If the broadcast from our office is lost for
a few minutes, the power momentarily goes out, or we have to
switch to our
backup transmitter (on the same tower), the transmitter goes
on low power. For some of our older transmitters (Hagerstown
& Moorefield), this means that it is broadcasting
at 100 Watts versus 1000 Watts and it takes 45 minutes for the
transmitter to warm back up to full power. While it is on low
power it emits a
beeping sound in the background of the broadcast.