About Wwvb

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology—Time and Frequency Division) radio station, WWVB, is located in Ft. Collins, Colorado and transmits the exact time signal continuously throughout the United States at 60 kHz. The signal can be received up to 2 000 miles away through the internal antenna in the weather station. However, due to the nature of the Earth’s Ionosphere, reception is very limited during daylight hours. The weather station will search for a signal every night when reception is best. The WWVB radio station derives its signal from the NIST Atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. A team of atomic physicists continually measure every second of every day to an accuracy of ten billionths of a second a day. These physicists have created an international standard, measuring a second as 9,192,631,770 vibrations of a Cesium 133 atom in a vacuum. This weather station regulates the WWVB sensor.