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- [00:00]
Emily Gracie
You may feel prepared for the next weather emergency. You've got the latest weather apps on your phone, push notifications turned on, maybe even a smart home system that can alert you to severe weather. You're connected, informed, ready for anything. And honestly, that's fantastic. Multiple sources of weather information aren't just smart, they're essential. The more ways you can receive life saving warnings, the better. But what happens when modern tech hits its limits? When the power grid fails? When cell towers get knocked out? When your battery dies? That's when you want something that's been quietly doing one job and doing it perfectly for 50 years. Something that doesn't need WI fi, doesn't need cell data, doesn't need anything except radio waves cutting through the storm.
- [00:52]
Bruce Jones
They can do it automatically without you even touching the radio. And that's what saves lives, especially flash floods and tornadoes that happen in the dark of night.
- [01:04]
Emily Gracie
It's not flashy. It's like that reliable superhero who never gets the spotlight. Always there when you need them the most. Never let you down. Quietly saving the day while everyone is focused on the shiny new gadgets. Today, we're going off the radar and shining a light on the NOAA weather radio. Because sometimes the most dependable technology is the one that's been doing its job perfectly for decades. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey, and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do. Everyone knows that feeling, wanting to experience more stories but struggling to find the time. That's where Audible changes everything. With over a million audiobooks and Audible originals, there's a story waiting to spark anyone's imagination. Take the Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley, the gripping psychological thriller that's keeping listeners on the edge of their seats. Imagine unraveling its mysteries during your morning commute or losing yourself in its twists and turns while doing household chores. That's the magic of Audible. It transforms daily routines into opportunities for thrilling discoveries. The best part? Members get access to thousands of included titles with new content added regularly. From bestsellers to hidden gems, every genre imaginable is at their fingertips. And with one easy to use, switching between favorites or discovering new passions has never been simpler. There's more to imagine when you listen. Start a free 30 day Audible trial and get your first audiobook free at audible.com wondery that's audible.com wondery thank each.
- [02:51]
Bruce Jones
Of the nominees here for your expertise. Now this hearing, we have three very qualified nominees. We have Dr. Neil Jacobs.
- [02:57]
Emily Gracie
A couple of weeks ago, on July 9, Dr. Neil Jacobs, former acting administrator of NOAA, sat before a panel of senators in a confirmation hearing.
- [03:07]
Bruce Jones
If I have the honor of being confirmed, I look forward to working with all of you on the important work performed by noaa.
- [03:13]
Emily Gracie
He's up for the role once again as the head of the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. During that hearing, he told a story about NOAA weather radios.
- [03:25]
Bruce Jones
I'd also love to advance and modernize NOAA Weather Radio. No Weather Radio saved my life in 1996. I was at a campsite in Florida with some friends and it issued a tornado alert. And it was about 10pm and this was back before I had a cell phone or smartphone and I took out a gazetter and I looked at the towns that it mentioned along the way and I extrapolated the direction, which was right over where I knew we were. And so I drove around the campsite and held my horn down and told as many people as I could to leave. And everyone left. We went further down the coast to a hospital and went into the emergency room because it was the closest brick building. When we went back to the campsite, it was nothing but bare dirt.
- [04:11]
Emily Gracie
Neil's story is from decades ago, but stories like this are still happening. We saw it play out across the Southeast during Hurricane Helene. Cell towers were down for weeks. People in remote mountain communities had no way to receive weather warnings. No smartphone alerts, no Internet, no communication with the outside world whatsoever. Or more recently, with the devastating flooding in Texas rural areas where cell service was already spotty. And when the storms hit, even that disappeared. Picture this. You're traveling, staying in a hotel in an unfamiliar city. It's 2am A tornado is bearing down on your location. The power goes out, your phone is dead or has no signal. How do you know you're in danger? How do you stay safe? More importantly, what's going to wake you up so you can take action? These aren't hypothetical scenarios. It's a reality for millions of Americans every year. And there's one piece of technology that works through it all. No cell towers required, no Internet needed and no power from the grid necessary. If you have batteries. It's been quietly saving lives for 50 years. The NOAA weather radio system. A dedicated network of transmitters broadcasting life saving information. 24. 7 designed specifically to work when everything else fails. But here's what's troubling most people either don't have one, don't know how to use it properly, or even worse. There's rumors floating around about cuts to NOAA weather radio transmission. Today I'm talking with Bruce Jones from Midland Weather Radios to get to the bottom of all of this. We'll explore how this technology actually works, why it's more critical now than ever before. And Bruce will set the record straight on what's really happening with the future of weather radio. Bruce Jones, thanks so much for joining me today to talk about something that's been get a lot of buzz lately, and that's the NOAA weather radio. This is a. I feel like having a little bit of a comeback, but also there's a lot of fear and rumors floating around. So we're going to address all that today. Tell me who you are and what you do.
- [06:24]
Bruce Jones
My name is Bruce Jones and I'm a meteorologist. I was on TV and radio for 34 years. And so back many years ago, 49 years ago, I started telling my listeners and viewers, you know, America has the craziest weather on Earth. If you live in this country and you don't have a NOAA weather radio, let me give you the number of a good psychiatrist. So I have spent the last 49 years advocating on behalf of the NOAA Weather Radio Network, which is a network of transmitters that issues not only weather information, but weather alerts 24, 7, 365. So I'm currently employed by Midland Radio. They're a manufacturer of these gizmos. But I've been an advocate for NOAA weather Radio now literally for 49 years. I think it's a wonderful, wonderful alerting system. It saves lots of lives.
- [07:23]
Emily Gracie
You know, it's funny because when I was a kid, I remember my dad had a NOAA weather radio and he kept it on his dresser. And I guess I didn't really know it did warnings because I just listened to him turn it on every morning for the forecast. Like he would listen to it while he got ready for work and like, kind of like thunderstorms, like that sort of in the upper 80s voice doing the forecast. And so I, you know, I grew up with these things, but can you give me a little history? How long have they been around?
- [07:53]
Bruce Jones
This year, 2025 is actually the 50th anniversary of President Gerald Ford designating NOAA Weather Radio as America's official federal warning system. Now, that was done in January of 1975, because the previous year, in April of 74, we had an outbreak of tornadoes that they referred to as the super outbreak because in a 24 hour period, the United States had 148 tornadoes, quite a few of which were violent F3, F4 and F5 tornadoes. The tornado warnings were coming up so fast and furious that the entire warning system got clogged. And so if you were on a radio station in Indianapolis and you were supposed to be getting a tornado warning, that warning might not come through the weather wire system until 10 minutes after the tornado had already hit town. So in the aftermath of that, a lot of congressmen and President Gerald Ford got together and said, look, we've got this little radio network called Weather Radio. Why don't we make it an official alerting system? And they did. Fifty years ago this year, it became America's official federal warning system. And we now have 1035 transmitters in all 50 states and five US territories that can deliver information into your home, your school or your business direct from your local National Weather Service office.
- [09:34]
Emily Gracie
Can you give me a little like idiots technical guide to this and how it works? How is it that you gave me this weather radio in Boise? I brought it home, I turned it on and it knows where I live and it's giving me local information for Charleston, South Carolina.
- [09:47]
Bruce Jones
Yeah. The whole idea behind these gizmos was basically to give you an indoor tornado siren. And to make these effective, they have to work much like a smoke detector. The smoke detectors in your house are always on, but they only make noise when they need to when there's a danger. Same thing with these weather radios. They're designed to just sit there silently and they're always monitoring this broadcast with a temperature of 70. But they don't need to do anything until the National Weather Service says, hey, come on, come on. Activate. And when they activate, you'll get an eight second alert tone. It'll sound like this and then it'll come on with all the information direct from National Weather Service, which is usually something in the form of. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis has issued a tornado warning for Boone county, effective until 8:15 at 7:42. National Weather Service radar indicated a possible tornado located five miles south of Taylorville, moving northeast at 35 mph. And then they'll say, cities in the path of this storm include abcd. So this device, really acting a lot like a storm detector, silently monitors the National Weather Service broadcast. And when they need to alert you, they can do it automatically without you even touching the radio. And that's what saves lives, especially during nocturnal events like flash floods and tornadoes that happen in the dark of night.
- [11:29]
Emily Gracie
And in recent years, we've become pretty dependent on the wireless alerts that we get on our cell phones. So how does that work? How are they different from what we're getting in these wireless emergency alerts on our cell phone?
- [11:45]
Bruce Jones
One of the issues is the wireless emergency alerts are a little bit limited in how much text they have. So for instance, if you get a wireless emergency alert for a tornado warning, it might not tell you the cities in the path of this storm include abcd. If you were in Texas, in the hill country, got that flash flood warning, it might not have the information about how fast the rainfall is coming down and how quickly they expect the creeks and streams to start rising. That information is included in the NOAA weather radio broadcast. But honestly, the big issue that we have is your cell phone is being triggered by a signal coming from the nearest cell phone tower to you. If something happens to that tower and it gets damaged or goes down, you could not receive anything on your cell phone. So we always encourage people to have multiple redundant ways to get these warnings. Your number one source should be a NOAA weather radio. But then you've got your cell phone, you've got apps, you've got coverage on television by meteorologists who cover the storms wall to wall. And then finally you've got your outdoor sirens. But everyone needs to have multiple redundant ways to get these warnings so that if one system fails, you've got another right there to step up.
- [13:07]
Emily Gracie
You mentioned tornado warnings. What other types of alerts? Like if somebody's going to bed and they're like, I want a good night's sleep, I don't want to hear about like a rip current alert in the middle of the night. So what is this going to wake us up for and what is it not going to wake us up for?
- [13:22]
Bruce Jones
Thankfully you can control that by going into the radio and say, I don't want to hear a special marine warning because I don't have a boat and I don't ever go out on the water, so I don't need to hear special marine warning. If you live on the top of a hill, you don't need to hear flood warnings. So you can silence the flood warnings. You'll still get them, but they'll come in silently. This is a list of all the alerts that a public alert certified weather radio alerts for. It includes everything from tornado warning, severe thunderstorm warning, storm surge warning, hurricane warning, hurricane watch, tsunami watch, tsunami warning. But there are also a host of non weather emergencies for which you know, weather radio could alert as well, including wildfire warning, a dam break warning if a dam is ready to fail, civil emergency message in case you have a bad ice storm and your county emergency manager needs to say, hey, the roads are so bad we can't even get our fire trucks and ambulances out there, so please stay at home. That's a civil emergency message. But you could also have a radiologic emergency or a nuclear power plant emergency. So there are quite a few things that your county emergency manager could alert you to as well. But on a public alert certified weather radio, you can silence a lot of things that you don't want to hear that alert tone for.
- [14:50]
Emily Gracie
You know, there's a lot of you, you work for Midland, but there's a lot of different types of weather radio and I'm curious how they've like evolved over the years. And what's the difference when you're going to buy one? Like, do you, do you have to spend a lot of money? Are there some that are really cheap and simple? Like, what's the differences here when we're looking at them?
- [15:09]
Bruce Jones
You know, that's a great point. First of all, I would look for this public alert certification. A public alert certified weather radio has to have that 77 decibel alert tone so it'll wake you up if there's a tornado coming. It also has to have battery backup so it'll continue to operate even when your city electricity fails. And on the back of a public alert certified weather radio, there's an external alert port. This is for using a strobe and pillow shaker for the deaf and hard of hearing. So if you have a grandma or grandpa that's losing their hearing, they could have a weather radio that actually have a strobe light and a pillow shaker and that would help alert them. So look for the public alert certification. This little white radio that I'm holding, it's just a weather radio. That's all it does. There's no AM FM on here. And the reason why manufacturers have just basic weather radios like this is we want them to be affordable. In the electronics industry, every gizmo that you add in here jacks the price up. So you put AM in here, price goes up. Put FM in here, the price goes up. You do all these things and the price just keeps rising and rising. The purpose of a weather radio like this one that I'm holding, and there are other manufacturers who make them just like this, basic, straightforward, simple and affordable. So people who live in vulnerable housing, mobile homes or older homes that are is structurally sound anymore, they can afford this radio. And that's the most important thing we need to make these gizmos affordable for these vulnerable populations who often bear the brunt of severe weather.
- [16:57]
Emily Gracie
So how much are we talking here for? Like, the most basic.
- [17:00]
Bruce Jones
Yeah, these radios are like, I think 40, $49.99.
- [17:05]
Emily Gracie
Do you ever, like, do donations for those communities? Because that's still kind of a hefty price tag. Like, if you're trying to decide between dinner tonight and the weather radio, you know, I agree.
- [17:15]
Bruce Jones
A lot of emergency managers will use FEMA hazard mitigation funding, and they'll purchase quantities of these. This radio I'm holding has a county of Los Angeles sticker on it. This is a Los Angeles county radio that they use for wildfire warnings. So the county emergency managers will frequently buy by bulk quantities. And then if you're a county resident, you can go and pick one up for free or for. Sometimes they'll sell them for three or four dollars for a radio. But county emergency managers are a good source of that. So if you're in need. If you're listening to this podcast and you're in need of a weather radio and it's tough for you to afford $50, contact your county emergency manager and ask them if they have a program that provides these to you.
- [18:04]
Emily Gracie
Awesome. And then you know it. Also, like, mine is plugged in right now, but if you're in the middle of a weather emergency, you might not have electricity. So tell me about kind of the battery situation and the importance of. Of having that stock.
- [18:19]
Bruce Jones
Yeah. A public alert certified weather radio has to have battery backup. So this one in my hand, I'm actually running off the batteries right now. But you do keep it plugged into the wall all the time. And that way the batteries are only used during a power outage. Or if I were to unplug this and take it with me to my shelter, let's say there's a tornado warning. I could unplug this and take it with me to my shelter and I press this little button and listen to the broadcast. So I could be in my shelter with this unplugged, it's going to run off the batteries and I'll still have access to the latest National Weather Service information about that particular event.
- [18:59]
Emily Gracie
So important. Okay, you mentioned the tools, like, if you are hearing impaired. So I want to talk about inclusivity a little bit, too. What about if you don't speak English? What are there options there?
- [19:12]
Bruce Jones
If you don't speak English. Again, public alert certified weather radio has to be able to display up here in English, Spanish, or French because there's. We have no weather radio in the United States. Canada has the same system. It's called Weather Radio Canada. So they use these in Canada, and then in Mexico, the SARMAX Seismic alerting system uses these radios for earthquake alerts. So you can set this display window to display, let's say, tornado warning in English or tornado warning in French or tornado warning in Spanish. So you can change the display here, the language of the display window, to display in your native tongue.
- [20:00]
Emily Gracie
Gotcha. Okay. And then also, I'm curious because you gave me a little piece of paper, too, when we were in Boise, and it made mention of this partial county. So when you're going through this setup, what's the deal with the partial counties and the warnings? Can you explain that to me?
- [20:16]
Bruce Jones
Absolutely. A NOAA weather radio is set to go off for the county that you live in. So when you set up the radio, when you program it, you tell it, well, I live in Johnson County, Tennessee. And then it will only go off for Johnson County, Tennessee. And that's to save you from being overwarned. But let's suppose Johnson County, Tennessee, is a large county or oddly shaped county. In that case, the national weather service in 2026 is rolling out what's called partial county alerting, where your county can actually be partitioned into smaller segments, and the National Weather Service can warn just those segments of the county that need the warning. So if you have a large county and the tornado is on the ground and it's only going to clip the extreme northwestern corner of the county, National Weather Service could set off the weather radios in just that corner of the county. It's called partial county alerting. And this is a graphic for Sonoma County, California. And what Sonoma County, California, has done is they have partitioned their county based on their wildfire evacuation zones. So in any of these colored areas on this map, whatever area you live in, that is a wildfire evacuation zone. And when you set up your radio in Sonoma County, California, you tell it which section of the county you live in. And now Sonoma county can send a wildfire evacuation to your cell phone, to your landline phone, and to your NOAA weather radio. So you get three notifications that you're in a wildfire evacuation zone and you need to get out. And this is the result of the Tubs fire back years ago that burned so dangerously into this town of Santa.
- [22:07]
Emily Gracie
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- [22:20]
Bruce Jones
Thanks.
- [22:20]
Emily Gracie
Have a good one. Yep, that too. Want one place to manage all your online and in person sales? That's kind of our thing. Wherever you sell. Businesses that grow grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial@shopify.com listen shopify.com listen. So one roadblock that kind of I thought might be an issue as I was setting mine up. And I'm a meteorologist who is familiar with my county and familiar with my zones and, you know, doesn't struggle geography. I didn't know what portion of the county I lived in, given the options. First of all, Charleston county is kind of strange. It's on a coast, so it's like this. But also like there was no place on the Internet that I could find a map of this. And then like the map you just showed me. That's great. But like, how does somebody find themselves on that map? It's like an ongoing communication issue, right, with meteorologists and translating this information to the public. So is that a barrier? How do we overcome that?
- [23:23]
Bruce Jones
This is a very important question about partial county alerting, and it's this. You pointed it out. Right now, the partial county alerting is just being rolled out for the United States. And not every county has been partitioned yet. Once that is done by your county emergency manager, by sitting down with the National Weather Service and saying, we need to partition this county, we need to divide it up, National Weather Service and emergency management will decide how are we going to divide up this county? Then they will post that information on the National Weather Service website and on the county emergency management website. Until that point in time, until partial county alerting has been initiated for your county, just set your radio to whole county, meaning entire county. Because until they do this partitioning in 2026, until they do that partitioning, you must assume that you just have to have your radio set for whole county, the entire county, and leave it at that.
- [24:26]
Emily Gracie
Okay, got it. Okay. So let's say you've set it up. It's for your county. But you know, let's talk about recent events. Let's say you're getting in your camper and you're headed to go do some camping in a different state. Does your radio know where you are if you take it with you? Or do you have to go through trying to Understand that local municipality?
- [24:46]
Bruce Jones
That's a good question. Can I, can I go off camera for just a second?
- [24:50]
Emily Gracie
Yeah, go for it.
- [24:51]
Bruce Jones
I got one. I should have brought it over earlier. I should have brought it over earlier. All right, so the question is, when you travel, can you take this radio with you? A programmed radio for a certain county? Yeah, you can. But when you get to Grand Canyon in Arizona, you're going to have to figure out, well, what county am I in? And, you know, you'd have to reset it. A much better option is to get a portable weather radio like this. And there's again, there's several manufacturers. This radio, you don't program it for a county because oftentimes when you're traveling, you don't know what county you're in anyway. So this radio is designed to take with you wherever you go. You can just tune to the nearest NOAA transmitter and listen to the broadcast. But when you have it in weather alert mode, it is going to go off for several counties around you now, not just the one that you are in, because again, this one you don't program for a specific county. It just monitors the frequency and the broadcast from the local national weather service.
- [25:53]
Emily Gracie
That makes sense. I'm guessing that one might cost more too, because of that.
- [25:57]
Bruce Jones
A little bit. This one has a hand crank on it, and hand crank emergency radios are very, very important if you live in a hurricane zone or if you live in an ice storm zone where you could lose power not just for hours, but for days or even weeks. I might also mention that when Hurricane Helene did all the damage to North Carolina. I've never considered North Carolina, the mountains of North Carolina, to be in a hurricane zone, but they obviously are. They lost power there for weeks. And to have an emergency crank radio like this that allows you to listen to AM&FM news and information and also the NOAA Weather Radio broadcast, these can be a godsend in a big emergency like that.
- [26:46]
Emily Gracie
Yeah, for sure. Okay. What do you see as common mistakes that people make when it comes to NOAA weather radios? Things are not doing. One that comes to mind is like just forgetting to turn it on before you know and not saying weather aware. Like not knowing there might be some weather tonight. We should turn this on before we go to bed. Are there other things that people are doing are making these not work for them?
- [27:12]
Bruce Jones
Well, the number one thing on, on a weather radio, there is an on off switch here on the side. But I tell people you never want to turn that off. If you turn that off, you've turned off the weather radio and now all you have is a white plastic clock. That's all it is because you turned off no weather radio. The radio needs to be on all the time. It's silently on. Like this radio is on right now. If I wanted to make noise, I can push this button and you can hear it make noise, but I keep it silent like this. And the radio, like a smoke detector, sits there silently, doesn't make a peep, but it'll come on automatically. So make sure you leave the switch on all the time and the radio will just sit there. It'll use about 85 to 90 cents worth of electricity per year. So it costs you nothing to have this device in your home. The other thing, years ago, people used to set their weather radios to go off for Mike. I'd say my county, plus the three counties out to the west of me, because that's where the weather comes from. I would hear that nowadays the National Weather Service is so good with their Doppler radars that they know when the storm is getting ready to come out of that county and come into my county. So I don't need to know about that county upwind anymore. I really don't. Unless I own property over there, or maybe I have horses and I want an extra half hour lead time so I can bring my horses in the barn. Only then would I program more than one county into my radio. With today's radios and today's National Weather Service, just program in your own county and that way you'll eliminate a lot of the over warning that tends to drive people buggy.
- [29:01]
Emily Gracie
Okay, that makes sense. All right, so you know, there's been a lot of stuff online lately and I see even among our profession, people sharing articles of disruptions and NOAA weather Radio or cuts to funding for NOAA Weather Radio. Can you address any of those rumors and kind of the stability of this system that we rely so much on?
- [29:26]
Bruce Jones
Yeah, there some of the rumors regarding cuts to NOAA Weather Radio with the DOGE budget updates, National Weather Service is not going to be farming out some of the maintenance for the transmitters. And so one of the little notices going around in the last couple of days pertains to that. It doesn't mean the transmitters are going off the air. It just means that the upkeep of those transmitters has to go back to the federal government, that with the DOGE updates, they're not allowed to let a state entity work on the transmitters, that the work has to be done by the federal government. So there's that part. Neil Jacobs was just in front of Congress. He's being interviewed to be the next director of noaa, the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And NOAA oversees the National Weather Service, who runs NOAA Weather Radio. Neil's life has been saved by a NOAA weather radio. He's a huge supporter of NOAA Weather Radio. The National Weather Service understands that this system saves lives at a very, very low cost to the government. The National Weather Service fully supports it. And I think any congressman or congresswoman realizes that their constituents rely on this radio network. And if you start allowing transmitters to go dark or go off the air, you're going to hear from a lot of disgruntled voters. So if you are one of those people who thinks that your transmitter might be vulnerable to being unplugged at any point in time, don't hesitate to contact your representatives in Washington, D.C. and let them know that that ain't gonna happen around here. Let's keep them all on the air. And as it stands right now, that's what they plan to do.
- [31:18]
Emily Gracie
Thank you for addressing that. Yeah. Neil told that story during his confirmation hearing, which is really cool. He also, there was a lot of talk of NOAA Weather Radio during the confirmation hearing, and he made mention when responding to the Texas flooding that he'd like to see a modernization of NOAA Weather Radio. What does that look like or I guess sound like in your mind? Like, what do you see for the future?
- [31:44]
Bruce Jones
Oh, it's the modernization is overdue. Right now. Each National Weather Service office runs a number of transmitters. Like, I think the Atlanta office runs 13 NOAA Weather Radio transmitters out of that one office. The signal from the National Weather Service office out to the transmitter right now is carried by copper phone lines. Copper phone lines. That's what needs to be replaced. And that's what the National Weather Service is modernizing. They want to get rid of those old copper phone lines because they frequently get snapped when somebody with a backhoe digs too deep. What they're going to do is replace those with fiber optic or with cell connection or even with microwave connection out to the transmitter. So that's the modernization that we're seeing. We also have newer transmitters now, better transmitters. So that's another part of the optimization or modernization. And the National Weather Service continues to put transmitters on the air. Just this past year, they put two new transmitters into the Texas Panhandle following that, that tremendous wildfire that they had. So they understand the value of this radio network. It's very inexpensive to use this network to warn millions of people of severe weather and disasters. And so the National Weather Service is not only going to maintain it, they're going to modernize it and expand it. That's the plan.
- [33:19]
Emily Gracie
It makes total sense. When you think about, like the money spent on satellites and stuff, this must be just small beans, right?
- [33:25]
Bruce Jones
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. They have, you know, satellites that cost over a billion dollars a piece. And the budget for NOAA weather radio is, is less than $20 million a year. And that's to run 1035 transmitters. So really, the cost of airtime on a, on a no weather radio transmitter comes down to just pennies per hour. It's really dirt cheap to run a NOAA weather radio transmitter. Our goal and our challenge is to get more people to take advantage of it. Emergency managers spend a lot of money on outdoor sirens. They're expensive. They can only be heard in about a half mile or one mile radius. And they're expensive to maintain, so expensive to purchase. They have limited reach and they're expensive to maintain the outdoor sirens. I'm saying you can buy indoor sirens, no other radios to cover all those homes for about 1/4 the price of doing it with outdoor sirens. And remember, when an outdoor siren goes off, it just tells you something is happening. You have to go and find more information. When a weather radio goes off, it tells you exactly what's happening, when it's going to be over, where it's going, and it tells you what to do to protect your life. So a NOAA weather radio is something that's good for your county emergency management. It saves them spending your taxpayer dollars, and it's good for you because in the middle of the night, two o' clock in the morning, when there's rain beating against the side of your house and your air conditioner's on or you have a floor fan going, you're not going to hear that outdoor siren. You'll be fast asleep. You need to have an indoor tornado siren. And that's why they built the NOAA weather radio network.
- [35:18]
Emily Gracie
So if I want to go get one today, if somebody wants to go get one today, where should they go? Where can you buy these?
- [35:24]
Bruce Jones
NOAA weather radios are available on Amazon. If you're an Amazon prime member, you can get that free ship to your home. They're easy to set up, easy to operate. NOAA weather radios are also available at a lot of retail locations like Bass Pro or Cabela's outdoor sporting goods stores like Academy Sports in the south and Southeast. They sell noaa weather radios and you can frequently find them at the grocery stores. I know the Publix grocery stores in Florida. They sell emergency crank radios for hurricane season so they are available. The quickest way to find one would be to go on Amazon.com and when you type in your search, make sure you type in Weather Radio Public Alert or Public Alert Weather Radio. Make sure you get a weather radio with that Public Alert logo on it because that means it means it meets certain specifications for safety and alerting types and battery backup Bruce Jones, thank you.
- [36:24]
Emily Gracie
So much for your time today. I learned so much. I've been a meteorologist for 20 years and I learned so much from you today. So thank you. This is so educational and so important. Saving lives this season.
- [36:34]
Bruce Jones
Well, thank you so much for inviting me on. And I'll tell you, the government has built out this wonderful network. We all need to take advantage of it. It's really in our own best interest to do so.
- [36:47]
Emily Gracie
Off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes publish every Tuesday. Thank you to Bruce Jones from Midland Radio Corporation for joining me today and sharing this important information. As Bruce mentioned in this episode, if you are in need of a NOAA Weather Radio, reach out to FEMA or your local emergency manager. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer Brian Petras for his help with today's episode. A meteorologist, Emily Gracie, make it a call. Great day.