Weather Radio

I was wondering if anyone knew a good weather radio. I'd like something that would alert me in the middle of the night and has some programability.

Bisc.

Good question Biscuits. I'm interested too. There was a thread on here a little while ago about radios but I don't remember it being that specific. Let's try searching for it and see what we find.

Check out SAME weather radios. They self activate after receiving a location-coded radio signal. Our Radio Shack model will wake the dead, has provision for a plug in remote speaker and it can be programmed for specific types of emergencies, while ignoring others, if you wish.

"After buying an NWR SAME receiver, you must program your county, parish or independent city or marine area into the radio. Do NOT program your radio for louder or clearer station not designated as a SAME channel. You will not receive alert. Your NWR will then alert you only of weather and other emergencies for the county(s)/ area(s) programmed. NWR receivers without the SAME capability alert for emergencies anywhere within the coverage area of the NWR transmitter, typically several counties, even though the emergency could be well away from the listener.
When an NWS office broadcasts a warning, watch or non-weather emergency, it also broadcasts a digital SAME code that may be heard as a very brief static burst, depending on the characteristics of the receiver. This SAME code contains the type of message, county(s) affected, and message expiration time.
A programmed NWR SAME receiver will turn on for that message, with the listener hearing the 1050 Hz warning alarm tone as an attention signal, followed by the broadcast message.
At the end of the broadcast message, listeners will hear a brief digital end-of-message static burst followed by a resumption of the NWR broadcast cycle.

SAME is also used in the Emergency Alert System (EAS). See EAS fact sheet for more information. Using SAME, broadcasters may receive NWR warning messages for rebroadcast in accordance with EAS rules."
http://www.weather.gov/nwr/same.htm

Jeff

I have a Sangean ATS 505 now, but I used to have a CC Radio that I believe had the weather alert function. I never used it so I don;t remember exactly if it had it.

Check out ccrane.com

Anything suitable out there for backpack carry where space and weight are at a premium?

I've got a Motorola Talkabout, but the Wx channel no longer works.

Biscuits:

You might try the following web site OR go to E-Bay "under weather radio"
www.weatherradiostore.com

I have a $50, WR-300 from Midland with SAME technology. It gets plenty loud when an alert comes in. I am happy with it.

We have an Eton that you can set to Alarm and whatever weather channel works for you, it will automatically come on when there is an "alert"...

I'm in the market for a backpack-suitable one myself.

All I can say is that if you want one to keep in a bag or other piece of kit, don't get the Oregon Scientific models. They're great to keep in the car, boat, at home or office, etc. But the buttons are so sensitive that once you put them in a bag or anywhere they can get jostled, you will hear an endless "beep, beep, beep" and you'll find that your radio is now tuned to the wrong SAME/alert code or is now off the standby/alert mode, etc.

Just something to keep in mind... and issues I wish I had anticipated when I picked it up a few years ago.

"...Oregon Scientific..."

I have had enough trouble with Oregon Scientific products that I now refuse to buy anything with their name on it...

I have both the yellow portable Midland weather radio and the silver portable Oregon Scientific weather radio and I MUCH prefer the Oregon Scientific one. I've used it for at least two years now and I've found it reliable and easy to remember how to program it. The midland requires me to open up the manual everytime I want to work with it - I hate that.

The other nice thing about the Oregon Scientific radio is that it will work both as a portable (w/ batteries) and as a desktop (plugged in and resting in a slightly larger cradle for better stability.

I both both from http://www.ambientweather.com and they provided a great selection and good service.

Ken

Some time ago I purchased a very cheap (as in crude) little carabiner radio because it picked up weather radio stations. It looked like this: http://www.sz-wholesale.com/uploadFiles/20050316145415909.jpg

I've never seen one that small before or since, but it just stopped working one day so I tossed it. I wanted to get another one, remove the circuit board, and install it in another container (like a tic-tac box or something maybe) but I can't find them anymore except for websites that want you to buy lots of them wholesale...

I agree. I've had my midland for several years, and I have trouble remembering how to use it every year when I go camping. And I'm no slouch technically. The worst was when the temperature dipped below 32 degrees and it started going berserk. Geeze, I know it's cold, you don't have to wake me up to tell me that. The "freeze alarm" wasn't even in the manual, I had to look it up online. And it was something like up-down-up-down-left-right-A-B-A-B to turn it off.

I'll have to see if I can get the Oregon Scientific within a week, before my next trip.

HAHAHA - I wonder if anyone else picked up on the old school Nintendo reference

Contra FTW! One of the best ever!

OK, just got back from my camping trip. Turns out it's been so long since I used my Midland radio, the batteries had leaked a little. Unfortunately, it hadn't leaked enough to ruin it, so I didn't have an excuse to replace it immediately.

After puzzling over it for about 15 minutes, I was able to remember how to set it up the way I want. Luckily, I remembered that it comes pre-set with the 2 alarms set for 6am and 7am, and figured out quickly how to turn them off. I remember the first time I used it getting woken up from my nice cozy sleeping bag way too early, twice! I couldn't remember how to turn off the freeze alarm, but there was no chance of that on this trip.

So, KenK, exactly which model of the Oregon Scientific do you have? There appear to be several models with the same case, and some on Amazon are getting rotten ratings, and some are getting great ratings. It puts me back into indecision paralysis.

My weather radio is the Oregon Scientific WR103NX.

According to http://www.ambientweather.com/radiosnoaa.html that model was replaced by the WR601 for $31.14 + shipping. The WR601 looks just like my WR103NX. I don't see any obvious differences in the description, but I'm sure there's a difference.

I would like the temperature feature in the WR113. Actually I wish they had not only temperature, but also min/max temperature readings. I really like to know how cold it got at night when camping.

Your post reminded me that I still need to remove the batteries after my last use. I try to do that for all battery-powered gear. Not worth the risk of not doing so.

Yah, my Midland has a temperature display, and I use it.

Thanks!

After reading this thread, I seem to be in the minority here, but I'm not a huge fan of weather radio alarms, even with SAME coding.

A county can be an awfully big place and you're going to get woken up in the middle of the night fairly often for weather that's happening far, far away. Where I live, the city has "air raid" sirens for warning about imminent weather alerts and those suit my purposes just fine.

Bottom line is you're going to get a lot of false alarms and these things can be insanely loud. If something bad is happening locally around bedtime, we're already sleeping in the basement.

I agree, I always leave the alert feature off. They're great for getting weather forecasts when you're disconnected from the internet.

But the whole idea of the alert is to let you know when bad weather is in the area. I'd rather get awaken in the middle of the night and then listen to the radio for details than get caught with my pants down ... well, asleep.

Keep in mind that during this scenario, besides several other adults being involved, it is not uncommon for 15-25 young lives are at stake. I don't mess around with real bad weather (interpreted as severe thunderstorms or tornados) when sleeping in tents.