NOAA Weather Radio Failure This Morning

NOAA Weather Radio (KEC-60 Delafield) Failure This Morning

At 1:42am this morning, our office issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Milwaukee, Walworth, Racine, Waukesha, and Kenosha counties for straight line winds to 60 mph. The warning went out as normal, except across our NOAA Weather Radio transmitter KEC-60 in Delafield. Our office has been testing some new hardware that transmits the radio feed from our office to the transmitter. This equipment failed last night as the signal couldn't make it through the rain from the thunderstorm to the transmitter. We have promptly shut down this equipment and switched back to our normal hardware for relaying a signal to the Delafield site. The warning did go out on the other transmitters and through all other normal methods.

We apologize for what occurred this morning as we had just posted how important it is to have a way to receive warning information at night and this is one of the main methods. It does stress the importance of having multiple ways to receive warnings, which includes cell phone apps. Wireless Emergency Alerts would not have relayed this warning as they only push out Tornado and Flash Flood Warnings.

Again, we apologize for this warning not alerting NOAA Weather Radio this morning as the storms moved through. If you have any questions regarding this, please contact Warning Coordination Meteorologist Tim Halbach at timothy.j.halbach@noaa.gov or 262-965-5061 x726.