Emergency Severe Weather Notifications

[cmcdar]

Spent six hours plus last night in Severe Thunderstorms and Tornado Watches and Warnings.

The thing that troubles me the most is - the LACK of notification. We did get notified by one of the Campground Hosts.

Last year, this exact time, my cell phone blared out and alarm and then an audible announcement. We knew of the Tornado Watch hours before the camp host came by.

I did get a notice regarding the thunderstorms BUT no such notice of the Tornado Watch.

I know I can purchase a stationary Weather Radio and I still might BUT I am traveling out of state and it is difficult to find out current county location and re-program the radio everytime we stop.

I have an android phone and I have spent hours searching thru Google Play for apps but all seemed to require constant data/internet connection.

I do have WEA enabled on my phone but I am troubled that I was NOT NOTIFIED regarding the Tornado Watch then Tornado Warning.

Anyone found a solution?

[Fizz]

No sympathy here.

You know there is danger
You know how to watch out for it (weather radio)
Look after yourself, don't depend on others.

[YC_1]

Program the radio for ALL alerts versus SAME when traveling.

Specific Area Meteroligcal Events or something like that.

[dalenoel]

X2 for the weather app.

[dewey02]

I have a Midland weather radio which has a "Travel Mode" that automatically locates the NOAA weather station nearest to your county and locks into that broadcast. You don't need to reprogram anything, just need to push the Travel Mode button. It can be set to sound an alarm for any type of warning in your area.

[STBRetired]

I have the weather alert radio and there is nothing to program when you change locations. The only reason you need to know the county is that the Weather Service will issue warnings for counties and you need to know what county you are in to know if it applies to you. Sometimes I remember to ask when I check in, most times I don't. If there is an alert, I can Google for the county map for whatever state I am in, or for the specific county mentioned in the alert. Most of the time, I just pull up the weather app on my phone as it always is centered wherever I am.

[RoyB]

I use several methods in my setup... SIRIUS RADIO, CELL PHONE, and a portable NOAH ALERT RADIO wired into the Trailer. The simple ones search for a NOAH signal when first turned on which is a problem on some of the more fancy NOAH ALERT radios which has setting depending on where you are located. This always presented a problem for me when in travel mode...

My NOAH WX RADIO is the el-cheapo Radio Shack 12-260 model that looks for the WX channels as soon as you power it up. This one picks up only the WX Information transmitted from the picked up channels where you are located. You get all of the alerts and sort of have to know what county you are in to know where the alerts are for. I had to use one of those 12VDC selectable different power output settings as this unit operates from a 9VDC setting as I recall.





The newer WX RADIOs all have the 'SAME' feature where you can only listen to selected counties and other type of National Alerts... You have to change this setting depending on where you are located with the ones I had.

This is what works best for me but it is a somewhat older unit and newer units may have a way around this problem for the travelers...

Being in a POPUP Trailer makes one really watch the skies and scan the Digital HDTV channels looking for live RADAR from the local towns when camping on the road. During these times we always ask where the safest place to go to when having tornado alerts when checking in...

So far so good for us...

Roy Ken

[ken56]

Vigilance and common sense. That's about all I can add. Technology is wonderful most of the time, don't bet your life and welfare on it though.