Weather Awareness

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Spring usually brings severe weather in many parts of the country, and I think most would agree that tornadoes are one of the worst in terms of little or no notice.  Hurricanes come with at least several days’ notice, and although they can bring severe winds it’s usually floods that kill most people. In normal situations we all probably have at least one app on our phone to track weather.  In addition, we probably have our phones set to give us news and weather alerts.  As we have mentioned in previous articles you should have radios for communications, and most VHF radios (Baofeng’s etc.) should have the ability to monitor the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Weather Service (NWS) weather radio frequencies.  The NOAA weather broadcasts use seven frequencies between 162.400 to 162.550 and vary by location.  It is important you use the correct frequency for your area because NOAA sends specific messages and alerts based on geographical areas using Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME).  Each county or municipal area has a specific code that can be entered into a weather radio.  The radio will then alert to the county and weather type based on the code....