Well there isn’t just one frequency, but seven. Good weather radios are able to tune to all seven frequencies and operate by battery. You may be wondering exactly what the weather radios broadcast? The broadcasts include the weather and warnings including post-event information for “all hazards” like earthquakes, tornados, and chemical spills.

The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Radio, known as NWR, is broadcast as a public service resource for the National Weather Service’s severe storm warnings and the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Emergency Alert System. NOAA broadcasts (MHz): 162.400, 162.425, 162.450, 162.475, 162.500, 162.525, and 162.550 24 hours a day. An AM/FM radio will not receive the NWR broadcast. A scanner, radio receiver i.e. a weather radio is needed.

You can be picky with what alerts you receive. New weather radios allow you to choose the alerts that you want to receive by geographic area. This technology is called Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME). The weather radio can turn itself on for the area selected when an emergency alert is sent out.
When selecting a weather radio check to make sure that the radio can run on batteries and that it can tune to all seven frequencies.

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