Texas Floods: Any mention of Weather Radio?

[Doug Elrod]

I appreciated CNN's digging to get the prohibition against cellphones and other
electronics for Camp Mystic (given the way they've become attention-sinks, this is understandable).
And apparently cell phone coverage was spotty in the area, in any case.

But I haven't seen anyone mentioning NOAA Weather Radio yet.  Is it still around?
Last time I looked into it, they had ways to configure them to alert you to pretty
sophisticated conditions (location, threat level, etc.)

-Doug Elrod (dr...@cornell.edu)

[danny burstein]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2025, 'Doug Elrod' via World News Now Discussion List wrote:

> But I haven't seen anyone mentioning NOAA Weather Radio yet.  Is it still around?
> Last time I looked into it, they had ways to configure them to alert you to pretty
> sophisticated conditions (location, threat level, etc.)

<raising hands!>

a: yes, it's still around
b: it's an afterthought and lots of the trasnmitters
are dysfunctional.

I've had _huge_ battles with them when the NYC one was offline,
literally, for years. The less I say about NOAA's non response
and the USELESSNESS of local, and US Senator/Reps, the better.

https://www.weather.gov/nwr/

which also, convenitenly, includes a partial list
of outages...

note, for example:
"WWF37 Carlsbad, NM is out of service (2/11/2022)"

oh, double side note: In some areas the Local Authorities
Having Jurisdiction (sorry, I just love that phrase..)
have "translators" (aka "repeaters") which take the local
NOAA transmission, which is in the 162.xxx MCS range
and rebiracast it on one of the low power, 1600 or so KCS,
frequencies.

The local folk will break in a couple of times/hour with
regional items of interest such as road traffice
adviseries. These stations are often referred to
as "Travelers' Information Stations" (a subset...)

https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/travelers-information-stations-search

[Jim Ellwanger]

For several summers in a row four decades ago, I went to a summer sleepaway camp in the mountains of North Carolina that banned electronics (of course, back then it was boom boxes or the Sony Walkman that they were preventing campers from using).

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World News Now Discussion List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to wnndl+un...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wnndl/237155775.803090.1752004364685%40mail.yahoo.com.
>

[Paul Pietromonaco]

Funny you should mention NOAA weather radio.  I actually just bought one
of these.  I have this one:
https://midlandusa.com/collections/weather/products/er50-e-ready%C2%AE-emergency-weather-alert-crank-radio

I picked it up on a Clearance sale at a Walmart.  It has a NOAA alert
function - and I can confirm it's loud.  It also strobes the flashlight
- you definitely know when it goes off.  I accidentally turned the alert
on - and it went off at dinnertime one day.  The whole family freaked out.

Now - the bigger question - was the NOAA alert system activated in
Texas?  NBC says it was:
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/questions-and-calls-for-accountability-grow-in-texas-after-deadly-floods-242815557904


According to this video - the National Weather System sent alerts to
cell phone and radios. Jump to about 1:30.

But - you have to set the radio into "alert mode" to get notified.  It
doesn't automatically enter that mode.

Cheers,
Paul