Sitting in traffic, Emergency Radio signal interrupts station...

[Mark W.]

Interesting when the alert came across I was in a dump truck hauling chip rock to ODOT in Salem I just reached up and punched the preset for a Corvallis station and went back to listening to music.

 

[The Heretic]

I heard that alert today too. My wife happened to be in the car in front of me, listening to the radio on a different station and didn't get the alert - so it appears some stations got it, others didn't.

This isn't the first time I've heard these alerts for real - most of the time it's for an Amber Alert, but this is the third time I've heard a weather alert in the past few years - each time it was for severe thunderstorms moving through the area.

I switch between stations (OPB is having a membership drive) a lot. It seems nobody just gives plain news anymore, most of it is either stupid talk schlock or biased news. Anyway, I heard it on OPB, Kink (IIRC) and two AM stations and KBOO. Not sure about the rest.

 

[The Heretic]

Just buy a little Baofeng dual band radio off eBay. They're cheap and even cheaper used. You can program in the weather alert frequencies and just leave it on and squelched. If you just use it to monitor you don't need a ham license.
Per FCC rules, if its an emergency situation you don't need a license to transmit either, if needed. The little radios will give you a nice tactical advantage if you are out of regular am\fm range or just don't listen to that anyway.
I was listening in my car this afternoon while waiting for my kids and heard the weather alert on two of the weather frequencies. It was very detailed.

I have one, but it sits in my GHB kit in the cargo area of my SUV. I have my novice license.

It sits in the kit because that way it is always there, isn't visible to would be thieves and the mice can't get to it (yes, because I live in in the boonies, mice get into everything, including my vehicles - they got into the glove compartment of my SUV and chewed on the spare cell phone I keep there - I have glue/poison traps in the car and catch one or two occasionally).

 

[The Heretic]

They all blew the forecast on that one - radio, TV, none of them got that right. I guess to be fair, their were storms, but they were all outside the general PDX/Vancouver metro areas, so impacted a smaller % of the population.

Yamhill got some. Not long after I got home it darkened and rumbled but I didn't get any. The mountain often causes some, but not this time. I love thunder and lightening and besides wanting to enjoy the sunny weather, that was one reason why I left work early (I have flex hours, as long as I put in my 40, and I am there for the 'core' hours, I can come and go pretty much as I want to).

 

[The Heretic]

Used to hear these quite often growing up in Tornado Alley but not for anything as pedestrian as a thunderstorm.

Some of the places had some pretty severe weather, and getting hit by lightening isn't something to laugh at. I remember when I used to XC ski and one day in Bend they advised to stay home because of high winds. I and my daughter and nephew took a break from skiing that day - one guy didn't and was killed by a tree falling on him. I pay attention to weather advisories.

 

[Motomom34]

I signed up for CodeRed- CodeRED Mobile Alert app | ECN Solutions you can tailor it to what alerts you want. I used to live in a high fire zone so I had the alerts go to the home phone, cell and work plus e-mails. Oregon has dangers, not just from NK but volcanoes, fire and earthquake. Following an earthquake you have the tsunami threat. If I was there I would have all weather/ disaster alerts.

This is a wealth of info. http://www.regionalh2o.org/sites/default/files/2016calendar.pdf I know you are talking about radios but this calendar has all the numbers, resources that people in OR should have. I have not located 2017 but the info is the same.

 

[v0lcom13sn0w]

around 6 years ago me and the guys were at work. super super dark skies, hail,wind, and it was warm... i was like "guys were gonna have a tornado" (ive taken shelter from 3 tornadoes in my life.my advice, GTFO if you can, get to the basement if u cant. they suck)

sure as sh!t just as i said that the EMS took over our radio station saying a tornado had touched down in Aumsville. about 5 miles from where we were working. it was a pretty strong one too.

i hate the damn EMS, im glad its there but its just creepy... gives me chills.


last year during bow season i was in the desolation unit. we had hiked 4 miles in from the road on top of this finger ridge... next thing i know, i see and smell smoke. like, its close. i got a little freaked out but my huntin buddy suggested that we just keep hunting up wind from it... we did. we never saw flames but, smoke out in the wilderness aint no joke either.

 

[41mag]

On road trip thru Kansas a few years back, visiting family legacy area of small towns & muchMUCH open country.....radio was set for local station which suddenly began listing locations of imminent tornado warning.

Our GPS next intersection was exactly the location they broadcast. Looking in rear view mirror the entire sky was black ugly monstrous active weather cell.....

Fleeing ahead of it due west, as there were no turn offs and no ditch/overpass for any shelter, it was gaining on us as we RVd our way like a spasmodic ground slug.

It took over 20 miles before we gained enough to feel relief. Massive tornado core right on our tail changed our day just by that exposure.

 

[The Heretic]

When I was in A-school in Virginia (long long time ago) it was during the summer and there were a lot of thunderstorms. We (the smart ones anyway - 18 year olds are not very wise) always stood away from the windows - the thunder would rattle them. The barracks were modern concrete but the classrooms were in old WWII era buildings with single pane glass that sometimes broke from the thunder. Once lightning hit the barracks I was in and shook it. Lightning is not something to sneeze at.

 

[etrain16]

Yamhill got some. Not long after I got home it darkened and rumbled but I didn't get any. The mountain often causes some, but not this time. I love thunder and lightening and besides wanting to enjoy the sunny weather, that was one reason why I left work early (I have flex hours, as long as I put in my 40, and I am there for the 'core' hours, I can come and go pretty much as I want to).

I love thunderstorms too. Years ago it was my goal (back in the days of film cameras) to catch some lightning strikes on film. One night it worked out - I was off work, had some Fujichrome slide film ready to go and the storm was passing close to the area - visible, but no rain coming down on me. I drove a few blocks away for a better view, set up a tripod on top of my car and started running long exposures with a release cable - about 30 secs to a minute or so. I'd open the shutter and wait, if I saw a flash, I'd close the shutter and move to the next frame. I got maybe 20 strikes on film. Sent the film in for processing and the F'd up the whole thing - I should have asked them not to cut the film because whoever the dipsh!t was doing the cutting cut every single frame in half!! I was so pissed. And of course, at the time, there were no options to digitize and repair, only try to manually splice them. I never got a chance to shoot a storm like that again. It still burns me to this day. I still have those slides somewhere, I just need to take the time to digitize them at some point and splice them back together.

 

[CoastRange57]

I do not specifically get any EAS weather warnings, but as a former pilot I am pretty much in touch with weather conditions. I look at NWS website for weather warned areas and let my own observations guide my way. I have the Pulse Point app where you can select local fire department stations to receive notifications of their calls, and can also access Broadcastify to listen to the calls.

This time of year, I will look at the NWS radar map and find tornado warned areas, then look up those counties on Broadcastify and listen to the police and EMS in that area. Pretty interesting really. You can hear routine calls, and then some terror filled calls as the police and fire run right into the beast.

I had the ham radio on one of the linked repeater frequencies yesterday that covers the entire state and into WA and Northern CA. Easy enough to hear guys in Medford, Redmond and Portland talking and got a good real time report on current weather conditions.

 

[etrain16]

Which gets me to thinking, maybe I should leave the radio on more often? I know there are alerts for cell phones, but I don't see how to enable them on my phone.

I was under the impression that those alerts were turned on by default - you can choose to shut them off if you want. I'm on my 3rd iPhone and they have always been enabled. Not sure what phone you have, but on an iPhone if you go to Settings, then Notifications and scroll all the way to the bottom, you should see two "Government Alerts": Amber Alert and Emergency Alerts. From there you can turn them on or off.

I've never received an emergency alert on my phone, but I've had 2 amber alerts. Let me tell you, it scared the living sh!t out of me. I don't know how they do it, but they pump out more volume from that phone than I had ever heard before. First time I was driving and almost got in an accident it was so loud - and I'd never heard it before so I didn't know what the heck was going on. Second time, I was at home, asleep - it was not a pleasant alert to wake up to. Again, I don't know how they do it, but those two alerts pushed out at more db's than I thought these phones were capable of. That said, I haven't heard one in probably 3-4 years now. I'm starting to wonder if they're even using them because I know a number of amber alerts have gone out over the radio since then.

 

[The Heretic]

I have Android phones.

IIRC I had them turned on in my older phone but don't see how to turn them on in my current phone (Samsung III). I googled it but the menu just isn't there. It could be because my provider is a VOIP reseller of Sprint data and maybe they removed it?

Not sure, but I can't find it, and I didn't get an alert on my phone yesterday. Or maybe one of the alerts was from my phone? I did have it connected to the car via bluetooth. Huh.

 

[CoastRange57]

I am a radio nerd. When I travel I have a ham radio and scanner on, both on good exterior antennas. The scanner has every frequency in the areas I travel through. I do independent reporting for various websites, mine own sites and Twitter feeds. Some I make money on, others I do not. I have back door numbers for almost every dispatch center in those areas as well.

I have helped find stolen vehicles, was able to help redirect fire, police and EMS based upon being at the scene before they are. I have every creditable news reporter in the PDX area on my Twitter feed and have provided news video for them.

The Amber alerts are a joke. They tie up resources and waste time over too large an area. Most people ignore them. As a child of the cold war 60's, hearing the old emergency tones, merely meant that Ivan had finally launched the ICBM's and World War 3 had started.

 

[teflon6string]

My concern with N Korea is some crude version of EMP, in which case my car/truck radio would be inop.

 

[wcdubois]

I've been using nixle.com to receive alerts to my cell phone for years.
Works great, got several pertinent alerts yesterday.
And here at the Oregon coast (North Tillamook county) we got hammered with thunderstorms. Sounded like one hit right at the end of my driveway and shook the house big time!

 

[Connor Murphy]

Some of the places had some pretty severe weather, and getting hit by lightening isn't something to laugh at. I remember when I used to XC ski and one day in Bend they advised to stay home because of high winds. I and my daughter and nephew took a break from skiing that day - one guy didn't and was killed by a tree falling on him. I pay attention to weather advisories.

I give them heed as well, especially where high winds and trees are concerned. Lightning kills more people on average than tornadoes, I get that. My point was that in the sunny slopes of long ago the weather service advisories in my neck of the woods were weighted towards twisters and, oddly enough hailstorms. YMMV.

 

[nammac]

I don't know, personally I expect something more serious than a severe thunderstorm from an EMS interruption. I guess I have great expectations.

 

[etrain16]

I don't know, personally I expect something more serious than a severe thunderstorm from an EMS interruption. I guess I have great expectations.

Problem is nothing more interesting happens here. They have to justify the $$ they spend on those systems somehow. Maybe they could add alerts to indicate when the ice cream man is in the neighborhood

 

[JackFrost]

In central oregon, I hear the EAS tests ALOT, in the last 3 years they have increased exponentially. I HATE FM radio with a passion and only listen when nothing else is on. My business requires that I have alot of window time Mon-Thur and that means the Radio is on all day, (I enjoy music quite a bit) last few years I have had a Sirius subscriction and even then I hear tests several times a week. FM is far more though, if I am listening to any FM station I will usually hear one once per day.
And yes, I have already switched out the GHB's from winter/cold weather gear to spring/summer items. Big concern for me is being stuck out in Prineville or La Pine somewhere and haveing to hike back to Redmond, or taking hours due to road conditions/trafffic etc. And never let the tank get below half either!