Partial County Alerting: Sonoma County 2024

Partial County Alerting for Sonoma County: Nuts and Bolts

In addition to whole county alerting, already in place for Sonoma County, we are adding 8 unique alerting zones, allowing us to sub-divide the County by what we call Partial County Alerting (PCA). This will be most noticeable via alerts issued with the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and NOAA Weather Radio (NWR). Alerting via EAS and NWR are based on the Federal Information Processing Series (FIPS) and Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME), which tells the alert where to go.

Upon implementation of PCA for Sonoma County, in addition to the entire County alerting, residents will also be separated into 8 distinct geographical areas. This will be annotated by the leading digit of the SAME code. The SAME code is the FIPS codes plus a digit at the beginning. FIPS for Sonoma County is 06097. SAME code for the entirety of Sonoma County is 006097. Partial County Alerting will change the first zero (0) to a digit between one (1) and nine (9). See the maps linked on this page to find out what the leading digit changes to for your city, x06097, where x is a number between 1-9. Get your New SAME Code by address.

However, if NWR listeners with SAME-equipped receivers wish to continue receiving alerts for the entire County, they should make no changes to their receivers and leave SAME code 006097 in place.

Example: If you are in Petaluma and an alert is activated for Healdsburg, under PCA you would not receive the Healdsburg alert in Petaluma. Ultimately minimizing over alerting. By leaving the whole County SAME code in place, you would continue to receive all alerts from across the County that use FIPS/SAME as their encoder.

Timeline

• PCA software installation was completed 2 April 2024
• Internal NWS staff training will occur through Spring 2024
• Following training, PCA will be live for weather warnings
• Functionality testing and coordination with partners will continue through summer 2024
• Full implementation of Non-Weather Emergency Messages (NWEM) expected September 2024

Keep watching this page for updated timeline information

More Information

• Find Your New SAME Code using your address
• Service Change Notice (SCN) will be linked here once issued late June
• PCA fact sheet
• 6 Weather Forecast Offices Using PCA
• Programming Your NWR Receiver: Q&A
• SAME Location Codes for Counties
• SAME Location Code Information for Using PCA
• Information fore Broadcasters
• Reference: see how our friends in Clark County, NV implemented PCA

Feedback

Comments are always welcome, even outside the open comment period stated above.

Please send comments to Warning Coordination Meteorologist Brian Garcia @ brian.garcia@noaa.gov