eli5 – How do weather radios work in the US?

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just plug and go? And does it warn EVERYTHING or just like.. tornados and such

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Noaa weather radios are maintained by the us national weather service. Several radio frequencies are allocated nationwide for the broadcast of weather information.

You can manually tune to the local frequency for your area to listen to the broadcasts, or you can get a radio with s.a.m.e. alerts that will turn on automatically when certain alerts are sent by the news, similar to amber alerts or weather alerts on your cell phone.

Radios with s.a.m.e alerts must be programmed to the specific channel and s.a.m.e. code that covers your local area. You can receive weather warnings, weather watches or non-weather emergencies. Your radio can be left in standby mode waiting for the code which wakes it up and turns on the radio speaker.

The broadcasts are typically weather reports which are available on the news website. When the weather report updates, the computer reading the report updates.

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