Owning a Weather Radio is the best way to get notice any hour of any day when Severe Weather is threatening.
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NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards system is a network of radio stations which cover the entire United States, broadcasting continuous weather information, official warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information.
Weather Radio requires a special "Weather Radio" receiver, or you can use a scanner capable of picking up the signal. Broadcasts are found in the VHF public service band at the seven frequencies (MHz) of 162.400, 162.425, 162.450, 162.475, 162.500, 162.525 or 162.550.
A Weather Radio works something like a combination between a clock radio and warning pager. You can turn it on and listen to the broadcasts at any time and after a while, it will start repeating itself until new material is added.
You can also put it into ALERT mode...and it will sit there silently monitoring everything coming over weather radio 24/7 until it receives hidden codes that tell it this is a watch or a warning for the area for which it has been programmed...and it will then sound off with alert tones and turn on the speaker so you can hear the message being broadcast.
And, on all newer radios, you can program it with choose what alerts you want to receive.
Weather Radio will also broadcast warning and information for a variety of "Civil Emergency messages" such as evacuations, chemical emergencies and other public safety issues.