# Suggestions For Good Weather Radio



## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Well guys, my wife has been bugging me about this for a while and I just haven't been able to figure out what to get. We live out in the country now and can't hear the tornado siren inside our house, especially not when it's raining hard/windy. Of course DirecTV isn't a whole lot of help because you don't get the weather alerts unless you are on a local channel, and even then you usually end up losing sat service before the really bad stuff hits.

So I'm looking for suggestions on a good weather radio. I'd like it to be able to run on AC power, and have a battery backup for when the power goes out. I'd like it to sound an alarm if there is an alert in the middle of the night to wake us up so we can head to the basement or whatever if we need to. I would like to be able to shut the alarm off though in the cases where the storm isn't really in our area, or after we've already moved to the basement etc. It would also be nice if it could be used as a regular alarm clock/radio also.

I believe I have read that I should make sure to get one with SAME alerts.

I'm willing to buy local or online (I'm an Amazon Prime member so something on there would be great). I'd like to try to keep it under $100, but would be willing to spend a bit more if it is really worth it.

Another thing I would consider is an iPhone app. My wife and I both have iPhones so if there is a good app that will make your phone ring etc. and give you the wether alerts that would be great. Especially if it used location services to automatically know if you are in an area with an alert. I tried looking for an app and haven't had much luck though. I found a couple but both had bad reviews and said they didn't work well. Again, I'm willing to spend money, but don't want to waste it on something that isn't going to work well.

So hopefully since a lot of DBS customers also live out in the country some of you can help me out here. Thanks in advance.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Have you checked with the City of Peoria? (I have no knowledge of what they may or may not have in place)

Are you looking more for a warning system than a reporting or predicting one?


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

"Scanner Radio" app works great on Android phones.
Plenty of weather feeds.
I don't know if they bothered making it for the lowly i-phone or not.


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## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

There are several weather apps that will send alerts for severe weather. My-Cast, MyWeather (I think it still does alerts), probably the Weather Channel app. However, they aren't very loud. My husband & I are also rural & more importantly, in an area that has a lot of severe weather so a few years ago we got a weather radio. It does most of what you want other than being a clock. We programmed it for our county & the county to the west of us (since most of our weather comes west to east). We had it set to alert us until the thing went off one morning around 2AM. Scared the crap out of us. So we turned the audible alert off, making it pretty much useless. I mostly use the alerts from my iPhone.


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## John Strk (Oct 16, 2009)

I have been using a portable NOAA Oregon Scientific WR601 radio for years. Works pretty good. You can plug it in to AC power and have batteries. Currently $27 on Amazon.


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## dsw2112 (Jun 13, 2009)

HDJulie said:


> There are several weather apps that will send alerts for severe weather. My-Cast, MyWeather (I think it still does alerts), probably the Weather Channel app. However, they aren't very loud. My husband & I are also rural & more importantly, in an area that has a lot of severe weather so a few years ago we got a weather radio. It does most of what you want other than being a clock. We programmed it for our county & the county to the west of us (since most of our weather comes west to east). *We had it set to alert us until the thing went off one morning around 2AM. Scared the crap out of us*. So we turned the audible alert off, making it pretty much useless. I mostly use the alerts from my iPhone.


 Isn't that what you want it to do?


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Laxguy said:


> Have you checked with the City of Peoria? (I have no knowledge of what they may or may not have in place)
> 
> Are you looking more for a warning system than a reporting or predicting one?


I actually live about 20 miles Northwest of Peoria. Not sure what you mean by what they might have in place. There is a tornado siren a couple miles down the road from my place. We can hear it if we are outside, but can't hear it inside. I'm looking for something like the Oregon Scientific model somebody mentioned, or the Midland WR300 I've been looking at on Amazon. Just looking to see if anyone has anything like those that they really like or recommend. Or if anyone knows of any iPhone apps that will work well.

http://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Scientific-WR601-Portable-Weather/dp/B000U92H34

http://www.amazon.com/Midland-WR-300-MIDLAND-WR300-Weather/dp/B00009V2YV/ref=dp_cp_ob_hg_title_3

One problem I just thought of with the iPhone apps though is they probably rely on an internet connection don't they? My home internet connection is through HughesNet, so I'll actually lose internet service during storms. Is the iPhone smart enough to realize even though it has a WiFi signal that the internet coming from that WiFi is down, and rely on it's 3G internet? It's not going to do me any good if the iPhone just keeps trying to get on the internet over WiFi if my HughesNet service is out.



dsw2112 said:


> Isn't that what you want it to do?


Exactly, that kind of seems to be defeating the purpose of having a weather radio. We actually had a funnel cloud spotted near our house a few weeks ago and neither of us even knew anything was going on. We slept right through the storm, and because we didn't have our DirecTV on a local channel we didn't even realize anything was going on. If a tornado would have actually touched down we could have been caught totally unprepared. I would like to have something that would wake us up and let us know that we need to head to the basement in situations like this from now on.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Not actually sold by Amazon, but I have this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Reecom-R-1630...9YF4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1308178569&sr=8-2

AS for going off at 2AM, depends on the warning. I don't want a flood warning to go off, we're on high ground. But you can turn that off along with other warnings. The Reecom has better support for SAME than the ones Midland has. Apparently Midland doesn't support the End of Message tones, it just turns off after 15 minutes. The Reecom does, when it confirms the EOM it goes back to the previous state, such as standby.


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## Davenlr (Sep 16, 2006)

I have the wr300. It works great. Hasnt missed a warning yet. I have watches disabled.
Battery life is good too, if the power goes out.


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## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

dsw2112 said:


> Isn't that what you want it to do?


You would think, right? . Unfortunately, like with most places, the sirens go off in broad areas & the chance that the tornado is heading our way is really slim so we ignore them. And I say "we" meaning most of the people in our area. The forecasters are pretty good about knowing ahead of time that a storm capable of producing a tornado will be coming through & when it will get here, so during those times we keep the iPhones close so we can watch the radar. Those warnings come from either the TV or usually from alerts pushed to the Phone. Otherwise, the radio would be going off every time the weather service issued a new or updated warning, which for one of our last storms, was at least 10 times. It wasn't that there were 10 new tornadoes or 10 new storms -- it was that they were updating the warnings with new espiration times. With our radio you can tell it to not do watches but you can't tell it what kinds of warnings to ignore so even severe storm warnings make it go off.

As for the iPhone -- we were on HughesNet for the first 5 years we were in the house but 6 months ago were able to switch to Verizon 3G. Hughesnet's service was horrible but our AT&T 3G was pretty good so we rarely went to wireless on the phones but if wireless goes down, I think the phone switches to 3G. I'm not positive, though, since the router would still be up & therefore the wireless network would still be available even though internet access would not be.


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## trdrjeff (Dec 3, 2007)

Check out C. Crane, not sure they have any with alarms, but if you call them they are very helpful and can point you in the right direction based on your needs.

(800) 522-8863 
http://www.ccrane.com/


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