Severe Weather Radio

I was speaking to a friend who lives in another part of the country which typically has some severe winter weather, but not the tornados we have in West Texas... I mentioned the severe weather radio, and she was unfamiliar with this...It occurred to me, others of you might be unaware of Severe Weather Radios:  http://www.noaawatch.gov/themes/severe.php.  It may be that you are not covered by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, parent agency of the National Weather Service)  Severe Weather Radio... But if you are, these are great tools for dealing with severe weather...

Basically it is a radio receiver (get one with battery back up in case of power loss) which enables the listener to set the radio to the local NOAA broadcast, by a set of codes.  You can get constant weather broadcasts, or just set the receiver to get the emergency broadcasts... They also broadcast Amber Alerts http://www.amberalert.gov/.

The first weekend I had my radio, I thought I made a mistake...It was a weekend of multiple area severe weather, and it went off, and went off, and went off.  But, really, I was glad to have the warnings, and watched the weather (around me) on TV, and gave thanks for the information....

In Lubbock, the last several years, a local TV station KCBD http://www.kcbd.com/ with meteorologist John Robertson, and the United Supermarkets http://www.unitedtexas.com/ have joined to make a weather radio very affordable.  That is a great community service.

Maybe you need a severe weather radio.