Greensboro, NC -- This week, March 3-9, has been declared North Carolina's Severe Weather
Awareness week for 2013. So far this week topics have included knowing
your risk, developing a severe weather action plan and building a severe weather preparedness kit.
Today's focus is on ensuring that you get the alert when severe weather threatens your area.
A quick and easy way to get severe weather alerts is to sign up for free severe weather text alerts from WFMY News 2. From tornadoes to winter storms WFMY will send you a free text message anytime a watch or warnings gets issued for your area. Sign up for these free text alerts by clicking HERE.
A NOAA weather radio remains one of the best ways to receive weather warnings, especially at night. NOAA Weather Radio is a nationwide network of radio stations broadcasting continuous weather information directly from the nearest National Weather Service office. NOAA weather radio broadcasts official weather service warnings, watched, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In North Carolina nearly 30 NOAA weather radio broadcast stations provide weather forecast and warning information for all 100 counties. No matter where you live there is a NOAA weather radio station nearby.
NOAA weather radio will alert you 24 hours a day to the follwing weather hazards in your county: tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, flash floods, river floods and winter storms. Broadcasts are found in VHF public service band on seven frequencies ranging from 162.400 MHz to 162.550 MHz. These special receivers range in price from $20 to $65, though most cost less than $40.
The weather radios round-the-clock protection can be a life-saving investment and they can be found in most electronic stores and on many popular websites. When purchasing a NOAA weather radio, consumers are recommended to buy a radio with Specific Area Message Encoded technology, otherwise know as S.A.M.E. This technology allows the user to program specific counties into the radio so that it only receives alert for the desired county or counties.
More information about NOAA weather radios can be found here: http://weather.gov/nwr
To enhance public safety, a free Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) service was introduced nationwide late in June 2012. WEA messages are text-like alert messages received by your mobile device during an emergency in your area. The purpose of WEA is to provide an increasingly mobile American public with a free and fast way to receive critically important information, including extreme weather alerts and other threatening emergencies in your area such as AMBER Alerts and Presidential Alerts during a national emergency.
For more information about WEA and other alerting methods visit www.ready.gov/warning-systems-signals.
Continue to check in on digtriad.com and watch WFMY News 2 for more valuable severe weather information. Severe weather season in
the Triad is from March-May, but severe weather can occur at any point
throughout the entire year.
WFMY News 2