The more you sweat in practice,
the less you’ll bleed in battle.

I saw this slogan on a softball tee shirt today, and thought it rather fitting to kick off my 5-days of Hurricane Preparedness posts where I will be going over key components of my family’s hurricane preparedness. Paraphrasing, “preparing today makes tomorrow’s crisis easier to manage”.

This is Day 1.

One of the main parts of being prepared for a hurricane, is to know it is on it’s way. While we typically have several days of warning in a hurricane situation, the possibility of a tornado spawning while IN a hurricane is a very real, short-notice threat.  And since we live in Florida, home of some of the craziness, fickle weather I’ve ever seen, having a short-notice warning system is very handy.

I did some research, and found that almost any mainstream National weather radio (NWR) was better than nothing. However, a more refined option to require from your NWR was something called “S.A.M.E.”, or Specific Area Message Encoding. In a nutshell, this allows the weather alert radio to only sound an alarm and broadcast the warning to the unit for the areas it is programmed to monitor. Here is the NOAA’s version of what it does:

NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) is a nationwide network of radio stations broadcasting continuous weather information directly from the nearest National Weather Service office. NWR broadcasts official Weather Service warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Working with the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Emergency Alert System , NWR is an “All Hazards” radio network, making it your single source for comprehensive weather and emergency information. In conjunction with Federal, State, and Local Emergency Managers and other public officials, NWR also broadcasts warning and post-event information for all types of hazards – including natural (such as earthquakes or avalanches), environmental (such as chemical releases or oil spills), and public safety (such as AMBER alerts or 911 Telephone outages).

Known as the “Voice of NOAA’s National Weather Service,” NWR is provided as a public service by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the Department of Commerce. NWR includes 1000 transmitters, covering all 50 states, adjacent coastal waters, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Pacific Territories. NWR requires a special radio receiver or scanner capable of picking up the signal.

Short version – S.A.M.E. will save me from being scared into wakefulness by the alert of an impeding tornado that is 300 miles from my house in another part of the state. Once programmed to MY areas of concern, the radio only alerts me when there is a threat where I am concerned. I have programmed my unit for the county I reside in only, though it offers multiple locations to monitor.

As far as the alert goes, let me say this, I PROMISE you, if the first time it goes off in the middle of the night…you WILL poop yourself. I’m fairly hard to startle, and I woke up THRASHING!

I wanted a portable radio that offered both battery as well as a plug-in option. This would allow me to have something I could carry should I need to leave my home, but also offer a more permanent location and power option.

I opted for the Midland name due to their long-standard excellence in the radio field, as well as being on the list of recommended supplier by many review sites.

For the particular model I chose, my selection was based on a simple set of criteria. I wanted one THAT day, only had three Midland options, and of them, only one was portable.  Being on sale, made it easy for me to walk out the door with it, too.

I went with the MIDLAND ‘SAME All-Hazard Handheld Weather Alert Radio’, Model HH54VP. There is another model that includes a docking station for easier recharging that can be found here.

Feature from the Midlands website:

• S.A.M.E. Localized Reception
• Continuous Backlighting Option- Keeps LCD on
• 9 Programmable Counties
• Color Coded Alert Indicators
• Alert Override automatically switches over to warn you of hazardous conditions
• Alarm Clock with Snooze
• Silent Programming
• Single, Multiple, or Any S.A.M.E program settings
• User Selectable alert type-Voice, Display, or Tone alert types
• 10 Reviewable Alerts
• 7 Preset Weather Channels
• Public Alert certified
• Receives over 60 Alerts
• Uses 3AA alkaline batteries for emergency power back-up (not included)
• All Hazards Alert – in addition to important weather announcements your radio will also receive other emergency announcements such as:
  • Child Abduction Emergency (Amber Alert)
  • Nuclear Power Plant Warning
  • Biological Hazard Warning
  • Civil Emergency Message
  • Fire Warning
  • Landslide Warning

Being that I live only a few miles from a nuclear power plant, only the landslides are practical impossibilities. (Unless sink holes count….damn!)

I have the radio plugged into the wall, with batteries already installed. It sits across my bedroom on a high dresser for improved radio reception, probably the only fault I have with the unit. The reception indoors is spotty in some areas of my house, possibly due to my metal roof, though that is a guess. It has gone off about 6 times since I’ve owned it, several of them being great to have known in advance,as we were about to travel into the area affected. This allows us to err on the side of caution, something I find myself doing more as I get older, and hopefully, wiser.

Another nice feature it has is a regular forecast broadcast continuously for weather, sunrise/sunset, moon rise & set, and daily UV forecast among other things, handy if the power is out and you are looking for an update.

(You can listen to my local area broadcast here.)

While any weather radio is better than nothing, I really like this one for its functionality, portability, and dual power source. I’ve already seen it in action, and I must agree with the caption on the picture above, stating that these should be as common as a smoke detector.

So go get one!

db

Tomorrow, “The storm is coming, what do we do now?”