Is it on all the time (to receive alerts) or do you just turn it on when bad weather is coming?

I leave it on all the time. It sits near my bedroom. Here in Missouri, storms can brew up quickly so I want to know if something is coming at 3 am.

I don't have a weather radio with SAME capability, so I rarely have it turned on for alert activation. The only thing that's likely to happen suddenly here would be a tornado, and we can hear the sirens indoors with our windows shut. I do have a tornado app on my phone that very reliably alerts when severe weather is coming.

yes... the Reecom with SAME Alert technology is on all the time

I currently don’t use a weather radio. The radio I have that should be capable of receiving NOAA has yet to receive a signal so maybe it’s reception in the canyon where I live (SOCAL), or maybe the weather isn’t noteworthy (no tornadoes or hurricanes) but I’ve found them fairly useless. Or maybe it’s the radio...

That said, I’m considering the relatively new Kaito KA123 Digital AM FM NOAA Weather Radio which uses a silicon lab “DPS” (DSP = Digital Signal Processing) chip. What I like about the KA123 is that it has “alert mode”. My take is that the radio is basically on standby waiting for a prompt/signal from NOAA to activate. Is that typical of radios with SAME tech or is this something different? (It’s not a SAME radio.)

My better half’s pocket radio died recently so I ordered a Kaito KA220 AM/FM radio as a replacement. For a 2xAAA pocket radio, it looks pretty good — DSP & PLL circuitry —simple controls. Not a weather radio, but there are plenty of AM News stations here which should suffice.

SAME allows a weather radio to “listen” for an encoded signal that’s part of the alert tone that wakes up a radio. If your programmed location (county, municipality, marine zone) isn’t in the encoded signal, your radio doesn’t alarm. This, I am reliably informed, reduces the chance of a weather radio getting smashed by one’s aggrieved spouse when the alert does not concern you.

Got it. So the Kaito KA123 I was considering will wake up to every NOAA alert it receives, rather than only those which are zip-code specific. It might be good for those folks in tornado country who need a radio to carry around, but for leaving one turned on at home or in the office, a radio with SAME specificity is a much better option.

Here in SOCAL, the EQ in the middle of the night will either wake me up (or not), or kill me outright (possible but mostly hyperbole). The 3 second warning system in development will not be of much value to someone in REM sleep, let alone deep sleep. If an EQ wakes me up, it was probably big enough to make the news and an AM radio will suffice.

YMMV. If I lived in an area with tornadoes passing through, I’d definitely have a Wx radio with SAME programming.

The SoCal warning system for EQs may give you considerably longer notification of an impending EQ, depending upon your location relative to its epicenter. You might have five or ten minutes!!!

Hopefully one will have enough time to duck and cover, stop the vehicle, put down the blowtorch, etc. when the shaking begins. Not perfect, by any means, but way better than no system at all.

Five or ten minutes would be useful if you’re awake, but they aren’t there yet and usefulness will depend a lot on its false alarm rate. There’s nothing like a high false alarm rate to get people to turn off their warning system.

Or a loud, weekly test.