NOAA Weather Radio

NOAA Weather Radios are specially built receivers that broadcasts only National Weather Service forecasts and information...24 hours a day...all year long.

Radios that receive our broadcasts are available at a variety of electronics stores. Some of these radios can be set to sound an alarm tone when a warning is issued for your area! Police scanners can tune to the weather radio frequencies as well.

The radio tone-alerting feature is tested each Wednesday morning (usually between 11am and Noon), unless there is Severe Weather Occurring or Imminent, in which case, the tests will be postponed to the first available fair weather day.

Some radios can be programmed to alert you only when you wish to be alerted. This technology uses individual Federal Information Processing System codes (FIPs Codes) to discern when to sound the alert tone. The Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME ) system has been in use by the National Weather Service to alert emergency officials and the Emergency Alert System (EAS) for over five years.

A National Web Page will show you the FIPs Codes for all of PA. There is also a toll-free number you can call to get this same information. It is : 1-888-NWR-SAME (1-888-697-7263).

Tropical System
Bounding Box

The red box approximates the area where the center of a tropical cyclone must be located for the information to be played on the NOAA Weather Radios broadcast from our local office. The latitude and longitude pairs of the corners of the box are:

43N 91W,

43N 70W,

25N 70W, and

25N 90W.

NOAA Weather Radio

Tropical System Bounding Box

Tropical System
Bounding Box