Friday, September 3, 2010
A weather radio that really does what you want it to
We are all exhorted to buy an all hazards weather radio to keep us safe, but the truth is most of the time these usually get left switched off, mainly because they once woke us at 3am for a river flood warning or some such. The key to making weather radios work for you is buying the right weather radio. Specifically, you need one that can BOTH do SAME (so you can set it to only give alerts for your county) and lets you customize which alerts you want to get an alarm for. In my experience by far the best radio and the only one which has really worked for me is the Midland WR300 (left). I have one in our bedroom set to ONLY go off for tornado warnings and ONLY in our county. It works beautifully - we only get woken up if something really serious is happening (depending on your comfort level you may wish to be woken for severe thunderstorms, etc). Even the alerts you don't have alarms for will still appear on the display. I then use an email weather service (from Weather Underground) for alerts of lesser importance.
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Weather radios are good, however if you carry a mobile phone you should consider getting iAlert.com.
ReplyDeleteiAlert.com sends National Weather Service severe weather alerts direct to subscribers by text message or email for any U.S. city! I receive alerts for 5 different cities, where family lives and where I travel, and this service is priceless. I still have my weather radio, but find iAlert.com is more convenient.
What if you are at a child's soccer game? You are not likely to have a weather radio and most towns do not have sirens, however you will have your mobile phone to receive iAlert.com severe weather text message alerts. Something to consider.