The Emergency Alert System
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The 88D radar dome Gray, ME.

Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. On this show, I tell you about weather, but not about a current weather emergency. In case of a real emergency, someone else would be telling you about it on what's called the Emergency Alert System.

The National Weather Service, through NOAA weather radio, can tie into this system to warn you of dangerous weather wherever you are, should the need arise. In Northern New England the voice on the other end of the warning could be John Jensenius at the National Weather Service office in Gray, Maine.

JJ: "Say, for example, we were going to issue a severe thunderstorm warning, we'd push a severe thunderstorm button and a warning button, whatever county that particular warning's valid for, however long the warning was valid, and then we'd hit a send key. And that would automatically send it out over the NOAA weather radio in the digital form.

DT: What do you mean in a digital form?

JJ: "Ok, that would cause the somewhat obnoxious noise that you sometimes hear. It sounds kind of like 'eh-eh-eh.'"

It would also have a verbal presentation of course, immediately following the attention getting noise, which we won't play here for obvious reasons. The warning gets to area radio stations in about one second. There are 120 offices across the country similar to the one here in central Maine, each ready to send out warnings for weather in their part of the country.

JJ: "Well, it would be similar in a lot of places. Although, there are certain codes that we can program into the equipment.

DT: Like special marine here.

JJ: Right, special marine warning, they wouldn't have that if they were in Kansas. And there might be some things in Kansas that we might not have either. For example a dust storm."

Whatever the weather, warnings are only the first step. It's paying attention to and acting on the warning that ultimately makes it successful.