Pocket weather radio...good idea?

Instead of getting another flashlight or headlamp I picked up a Midland HH50/51 pocket weather radio at REI yesterday while redeeming my yearly dividend. I have weather channels programmed into a base and hand-held scanner but I thought a dedicated radio would be nice to have. It's not very rugged, more on the line of a cheap FRS radio, but it does bring in the strong NOAA signal on the Sears Tower in Chicago where I live. It has a weather alert tone but I bet I'd drain the 3 AAA's that run it pretty fast if I left it on.

Does anyone rely on these units much? Any stories to share on how they saved the day...or not? :shrug:

The problem seems to be with NOAA broadcasts, rather than the radios. We've kept a NOAA radio with alert, and S.A.M.E. features that permit specific county alerts to activate it.

Every Wednesday morning, about 11 o'clock, they run a test of the system. Our radio always functions properly. We've had in the last couple of years destructive high winds, flooding, and even a funnel cloud. The funnel cloud is quite a novelty for this area. It was seen playing around above our city enough that many people snapped pictures of it. In all that...... not a peep from the radio.

I can't speak for all areas of the country, but here somethings lacking. It's good for listening in on computer-voiced weather reports, but that's about it.

Empath said:

We've had in the last couple of years destructive high winds, flooding, and even a funnel cloud. The funnel cloud is quite a novelty for this area. It was seen playing around above our city enough that many people snapped pictures of it. In all that...... not a peep from the radio.

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What you have described is very disturbing. Coming from the meteorological community, I find it appalling. Any funnel cloud should have shown a clear couplet on the 88D. A tornado warning for such an incident is mandatory for CWAs affected. Not to issue one is considered a serious breach of duty. Most NWS offices operate in a professional manner. It is upsetting to hear that one may be a problem. The only other possibility is that a warning was issued but no alert was sent out (another serious breach of procedure), or the area has poor radar coverage. I'm curious as to which NWS office this involved. I would think about contacting the meteorologist in charge of the local office to inquire as to why a warning was not broadcast. NWS Weather alert radios save many lives annually. Of course, it is useless if an alert is not initiated.

I include this link for your reference.
http://www.weather.gov/nwr/nwrwarn.htm

As you can see in section B, some warnings MUST be issued. I don't mean to be overly aggressive about this, but the safety of the public is paramount and is the reason for the weather service's existence.

Summer '06 I worked in IT for a YMCA facility involving a summer camp. The photographer and videographer both carried handheld weather radios, and they would generally notify me that I needed to be keeping an eye on the radar before I ever got that far myself..

Empath-

Your experience is the opposite of ours -- though we were very let down with the ALERT feature, too. We live in New Orleans and contrary to popular belief our most violent weather comes in the winter -- from tornados.

We have five (no, six) radios with WX band and five have the Alert mode. We left it switched on only once during tornado weather. It went off about every twelve minutes -- a 21st century electronic boy who cried wolf. Worthless.

After Katrina the Alert feature has been hyped to death here but I won't be losing any sleep to see if they've gotten any better.

I'd also like to add that the garbled "emergency test" messages I've heard in a few different areas do not inspire confidence in me.

I do, however, like the WX band and probably use it in manual mode ten times a week. It's great.

I'm a bit of a weather nut, perhaps because where I live there isn't any. Never tried a weather radio (for that very reason) but for years wore a watch with a barometer which was surprisingly useful on the few occasions the weather did in fact change. It's pretty sad to hear that a federal government agency charged with providing weather alerts is falling down on the job. Although I've had very little exposure to the NOAA, I do travel for work and have found that a high percentage of local tv and radio weather personalities really seem to know their stuff and can generally be counted on for pretty current info. Maybe it's telling that more timely and more accurate weather info is available commercially than from the government.

I can't even imagine how it was for you in 2005, but you have certainly driven home the points on preparedness. Excellent posts, Sub. It turns out the slidell WSR-88d was not maintained well prior to Katrina and was wiped out early in the game. Mobile was of limited value for coverage as well. When I was in NHC in the 80s, we always had a backup radar at the University of Miami. In Andrew, it was needed.
You are right that over-warning can be as bad sometimes as under-warning. I agree that the voice broadcasts (artificial voice) are of good value. Here on Cape Cod, the marine forecasts can be of life and death value.

I suspect the failure in sounding the alerts might be due to a fear of over-reacting. The station is in Portland, and NOAA has combined several from the area, I suppose to become more efficient.

As far as I know they're willing to listen to their intended audience, so I'll see if I can contact them.

I do get timely email alerts from The Emergency Email Network. But an important email can't wake you up in the middle of the night. I think they also have some arrangement to notify by cell phone or pager too.

Thank you for that link Empath. Never heard of the Emergency E-Mail Network.

We've had record high temperatures here in Chicago over the weekend...in the mid 60,s! That spawned some severe weather yesterday as an approaching cold front met up with the warm air. High winds blowing freight cars off train tracks and a few tornado touchdowns were the action for the day.

The alert tone on my recently purchased pocket weather radio actually worked as advertised as NOAA kept warning the populace throughout the day. Guess I answered my original question when I began this post. :thumbsup:

I can remember when cable was still somewhat of a novelty and we were treated with the "radar channel"; along with a stock/news/weather ticker along the bottom. What a concept...there's the weather right in front of you 24/7 (most of us can read the radar) along with the option to switch elsewhere if you reqire further details or you believe that the world is truly coming to an end as evidenced on the screen right before you. :shakehead

Sub_Umbra said:

Empath-

Your experience is the opposite of ours -- though we were very let down with the ALERT feature, too. We live in New Orleans and contrary to popular belief our most violent weather comes in the winter -- from tornados.

We have five (no, six) radios with WX band and five have the Alert mode. We left it switched on only once during tornado weather. It went off about every twelve minutes -- a 21st century electronic boy who cried wolf. Worthless.

After Katrina the Alert feature has been hyped to death here but I won't be losing any sleep to see if they've gotten any better.

I'd also like to add that the garbled "emergency test" messages I've heard in a few different areas do not inspire confidence in me.

I do, however, like the WX band and probably use it in manual mode ten times a week. It's great.

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I have to ask, what kind of alert was on the radio?
There are some that will alert on ANY alert heard no mater where it is or what it was for.
Other radios can read the SAME code (Specific Area Message Encoding) and can be programed to only alert when there is an alert put out for the county / counties the radio has the SAME codes for.
Some radios can also be set to alert only for some types of messages such as warnings while ignoring the wide area watches and such.

They use SAME, set for my county and the adjacent county just across the river from us.

The storm system that hit California, Oregon and Washington a couple of days ago didn't register a single warning. We had high winds and overflowing creeks. The system works though, because the Wednesday morning tests all trip the alerts. The Emergency Email Network kept us advised though.

Fizz753,

It was a radio with a basic ALERT function. I'm pretty sure that the announcements we heard were all from the New Orleans station, however. This is not like a strip of cities packed closely together on the East Coast. Around here we have small centers of population separated huge expanses of swamp. The only NOAA transmitters on the same freq as ours are too far away to propagate an FM signal to us.

NOAA's Louisiana WX stations and their frequencies.

I have a Midland noaa s.a.m.e. all hazards too.
I can hear the weather being broadcast, but I never get a warning either.
I do get A meassage on wednesday, but it's to the effect that it did NOT receive the test signal.. so... obviuosly it's a fringe area, any suggestions on how to boost the reception? a long wire stretched out the window maybe?

If you've a means of using an external antenna, since the signals are VHF, a long wire antenna may not get what you want. A yagi type antenna, or even TV rabbit ears would permit some tuning and directional capture.

The weather radio I have required you to set-up which alerts you wanted to be notified of as well as the options of ignoring the test messages. I turned off Avalanche, tsunami, earthquake, and others that don't apply to my area.

So far I have gotten the thunderstorm and tornado alerts that I activated.

Mine worked like a charm yesterday--tornado! It's a midland, but not pocket. Sits by the bed. It was a Christmas gift.

83Venture said:

I turned off Avalanche, tsunami, earthquake, and others that don't apply to my area.

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What's the rationale behind deactivating what would never give you a nuisance alarm?