NOAA Weather Radios

Due to the tornado tragedy in Florida, I feel the need to make this post. My main point is plain and simple. Every home, business, school, and place of worship needs to have a NOAA Weather Radio.

Lots of government money is spent each and every year to put up outdoor sirens for the purpose of notifying the public of life-threatening weather danger. While those sirens are a good thing, many people mis-understand their design. Those sirens were designed for the purpose of alerting you to impending danger if you are outside....they were not designed to wake you up in your home in the middle of the night if a tornado is heading your way. I would much rather see government money go toward making sure every structure has a functioning NOAA Weather Radio than more sirens being put up.

Now, a comment was posted below the previous blog post, and it is a comment I hear fairly frequently. A complaint I often hear with NOAA Weather Radios is that people find them annoying due to the fact that they give them information that at times they don't want to know. A lot of folks still have older models of weather radios, and if that is the case, then yes, they can get frustrating at times.

However, newer weather radios are produced carrying the S.A.M.E. technology. Basically, S.A.M.E. technology allows you to select to hear warnings for only the counties you wish. For example, if you only want to hear warnings for only Union County, then that is all you would here. You can even get weather radios now that will only sound an alarm for the specific types of warnings you desire to hear as well.

So, once again, I cannot say strongly enough how much I encourage you to get a weather radio if you don't have one already. And, make sure you child's school has one as well. And, like I mentioned above, places of worship need them too...I have seen far too many weather-related church tragedies in my time as well.

While I suppose the weather radios can be annoying at times, I would say to you that I don't think any level of annoyance surpasses the need of hearing life-saving information. While all of us here at News 14 Carolina have the foremost goal of being on the air, bringing you possibly life-saving information, we cannot wake you up in the middle of the night and turn your TV on.

If the information I have looked over is correct, then unfortunately the loss of life in Florida was avoidable. Tornado warnings were issued in advance of the tornadoes arriving in the areas affected, and had folks heard the warnings at least 5-10 minutes ahead of the tornado, they could very well have made it to a place of safety. The situation down there just breaks my heart....and I felt compelled to put this post up.