RSSWeather Safety and Preparedness
Sep 19
Home Preparedness, Items checklist, home, weather No Comments
As you continue working on your home preparedness, it may seem that there are so many things you want to do and the money just doesn’t cover all of it. I think a weather radio is a key item for preparedness. If your budget doesn’t allow for this survival item, there is a free service that you can use to help in the meantime.
I personally like to keep a watchful eye on the weather. As you know, I live in the Dallas, Texas area and my family lives with the constant possibility of severe weather. This can take the form of thunderstorms and tornadoes during the warmer months and ice or sleet storms in the colder months.
For this reason, I have a weather alert radio in my home. Much to my wife’s displeasure, I have the volume cranked up and it’s programmed for our local county alerts. Although it is designed to be plugged in to the wall, it does have a battery backup feature should I lose power.
For those of you that are not familiar with the concept of a weather radio, it is designed to give you constant weather conditions and forecasts. Some units can also provide county specific alerts and broadcasts from the Emergency Broadcast System. To get more information on the additional features of these broadcasts, visit the NOAA Weather Radio page.
To me, the real advantage of the weather radio is the alert function. Should there be a watch or warning issued for my county, the radio goes off with a warning tone like the emergency alert system and the message is heard over the built-in speaker. Even in the middle of the night, from another room, I can hear my radio and any alerts.
My radio is centrally located in the house, but even with that placement, I won’t hear it if I am at the store, driving around town or in the backyard. For that reason, I have signed up for a notification service from The Weather Channel that can send a text message to my phone and/or an email to my inbox.
This service does not currently cost anything other than the normal texting fee that your cell phone company might charge. If you don’t want to incur any additional expenses, you can always use just the email option to alert you.
Although you might not be at your computer to get the email or might not notice the text message to your phone, this is still a great way to add another layer of redundancy to your home preparedness. This option makes a great backup to the weather radio and can serve you well if you are not within listening range of your home radio.
In my use of this service during the last month, I can tell you that I received the text alert to my cell phone while the alert tone was sounding on my weather radio. This is not to say that the text message will always be immediate, but I have been very impressed with the speed of the notifications for a free service.
If you don’t have the resources for a weather radio with the alert feature, I highly recommend you consider signing up for this alert service through The Weather Channel and try it for yourself. After all, the more we know in advance, the greater the options.
Home preparedness is about having options. What other options do you have for weather preparedness? Please share your suggestions and thoughts by leaving a comment below.
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