Weather Alert Radios

weather radio

Weather radio provides early warning for tornadoes, disasters and hazardous conditions. Natural disasters and life-threatening weather, like tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, flash floods, dust storms, and heat advisories, are regularly grabbing national headlines. Preparing your household has become more important than ever before. 

Weather Alert Radios receive advisories, watches and warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s National Weather Radio (NWR) service is the most effective, technologically-advanced and reliable means for the public to receive critical information before and during severe weather events.  To protect your family you must be aware of conditions. Weather Alert Radios help keep you aware.  They work while you are sleeping. 

When they are properly programmed with Specific Area Messaging or SAME is the protocol used to encode NWR systems so that your radio will only alert you of weather and other emergencies for the county(s)/ area(s) programmed.  SAME is also used in the Emergency Alert System.  When an NWS office broadcasts a warning, watch or non-weather emergency, it also broadcasts a digital SAME code. This SAME code contains the type of message, county(s) affected, and message expiration time. NWR radios without the SAME capability alert for emergencies anywhere within the coverage area of the NWR transmitter, typically for several counties, even though the emergency could be well away from the listener.

SAME numbers for our area:

Kosciusko

018085

Fulton

018049

Marshall

018099

Elkhart

018039

Wabash

018169

Whitley

018183