I bought one of the NOAA weather radios a year or so ago because it was on sale. It's the handheld, yellow Midland 74-250C model. It's a nice, pretty sturdy looking unit. It runs on 2AA, which is nice, but a set of NiMH rechargeables only lasts around 4 days while alkalines last 10 days to 2 weeks. It's a pain resetting everything after every battery change, though.

Since I bought it last year, it has alerted me twice--once for a tornado warning in my county during our wild winter rain storms here in Southern California last winter (no tornado that time, but a water spout was seen off the coast), and once for a tsunami warning after an earthquake off the coast of...Eureka or Crescent City, CA, if I remember correctly. (No tsunami reported anywhere that time)

These weather or all hazard radios are advertised as providing information and official instructions during weather and non-weather disasters. I'm just wondering if people here have had any experience with receiving non-weather related information from their weather radios? For example, receiving evacuation route instructions before a hurricane, or after a hurricane, information about where shelters have been set up? I never hear anyone mention the weather radio as a source of non-weather information before or after disasters so I'm wondering if that claim is sort of an urban myth in practical terms. Do local officials even bother notifying the National Weather Service and just pass instructions and information only to local TV and radio stations? Am I misunderstanding what kind of information one might expect to hear over a weather radio?

I have a battery powered AM/FM/TV radio and XM satellite radio in the car as alternative information sources if the power goes down.

In this neck of the woods (Central Mississippi), weather radios are very useful gadgets to have. I have a Midland desktop version which runs off an AC adapter with 3-AA batteries as backup. My take ois that the "All Hazards" portion is to alert the public about hazardous situations so that the public can take appropriate measures.

The local weather radio station was down for awhile after Katrina came through, but was back on the air when I got my power restored. I don't think that much, if any, "relief" type info was braodcast over it - though I think that's more of a local NWS office decision.

As Rita came through, the most of Mississippi was under tornado, flood and flash flood watches for better than 2 days and some 396 tornado warnings were issued.. There were several actual touchdowns and 1 fatality. The fatality was in a mobile home in a rural area and probably did not have an weather radio.

SO, in these cases, no.

Stay safe,

JimJr