HOW YOUR WEATHERADIO WORKS

Traditional weather radios simply receive the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather broadcast (usually within a 50-mile radius), then sound an alarm if any emergency code was transmitted along with the broadcast. This means that people who live near an affected area are often alerted, even when their own area is unaffected. Eventually, these excess warnings could cause someone to ignore a potentially lifesaving weather warning.

In 1994, NOAA began broadcasting coded signals called SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) codes along with their standard weather broadcasts. These codes identify the type of emergency and the specific geographic area (such as a county or parish and one or more separate areas within a county called a subcounty) affected by the emergency. Your Weatheradio receives, interprets, and displays information about the codes so you can determine if the emergency might affect your area. Only SAME-compatible weather radios (such as this one) are able to take advantage of this technology. Each SAME alert includes a FIPS (Federal Information Processing System) code that identifies a specific geographic area (defined by the National Weather Service). Your Weatheradio can be programmed to sound an alert only when a weather emergency is declared in that area. This helps you more efficiently track the weather conditions in and around your area.

Your Weatheradio displays weather alert information in the following ways.

Type of

Indicator

Recommended Action

Alert

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take shelter/take immediate action

Warning

Red

to protect life and property from

 

 

the described weather condition.

 

 

 

CAUTION

The National Weather Service (NWS) uses sophisticated models to determine an alert’s effective time; however, the end of an alert does not necessarily mean that the related weather emergency is over.

How Your Weatheradio Works

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