National Weather Service all hazards alert radios

Every family, and many businesses, should have a National Weather Service (NWS) all hazard alert radio. The NWS not only provides current weather conditions and forecasts, they also transmit all hazard alerts for a wide area. These alerts are not all weather related: such as "shelter in place", "radiation hazard", "civil emergency message", "evacuation immediate", "911 telephone outage" or "child abduction emergency". All hazard alert radios can be programmed for only one county.

The "Specific Area Message Encoding" ( SAME ) is a 6 digit code: ABCDEF. A = in most cases 0, it can be used to sub-divide a county into zones ( 1 - 9 ) otherwise zero for the entire county, BC = state number; DEF = county number. Example: Clay county Missouri 0 29 047 / 0 = entire county / 29 = Missouri state code/ 047 = Clay county code.

If a hazard affects a larger area or region, then all the affected counties will be individually triggered by the alert signal. Most NWS radios can be programmed for multiple counties. 

The National Weather Service has seven radio channels, frequency modulated (FM) voice and data:

162.400, 162.425, 162.450, 162.475, 162.500, 162,525, and 162.550.

National Weather Service station coverage and "SAME" codes can be obtained a the NOAA web site.

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