NOAA Weather Radio

NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts National Weather Service warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day.  NOOA Weather Radio is provided as a public service by the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Typically these radio broadcasts reach about 40 miles away from the transmitter.  The range depends upon a number of factors including signal strength, terrain, quality of your weather radio and current weather conditions.

Weather radios are equipped with a special alarm tone that will sound an alert and give you immediate information about a life threatening situation.  During an emergency, National Weather Service personnel with interrupt routine weather programming and send out a special tone that activates weather radios in the listening area.

With the implementation of the Emergency Alert System and Specific Area Message Encoding, it is now possible to program certain weather radios to sound an alert for only the counties desired in the National Weather Service broadcast area.  The owner of the weather radio would program the desired county into the radio.  It will then alert the user to weather and emergencies for the specific county programmed.

Not only do you receive severe weather watches and warnings, but with a push of the button you can receive your local forecast 24/7.

The East Central Kansas SAME codes, which originate from the National Weather Service in Topeka, Kansas are listed below and are the codes you would use to program your NOAA Weather Radio to receive alerts only in your county.