Weathering the Storms with the Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100

Living in Texas we wanted to make sure we kept track of storms that could come in with high winds and cause damage, and naturally living in Tornado Alley we wanted to make sure we were ready in case of a tornado.

We were always watching one of the local Dallas stations for our weather reports, and we noticed they were mentioning this radio. They were recommending that viewers purchase one. We went to Walgreens and bought the Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100 for $29.99. Actually darn near any price would have been worth it.

We took the Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100 home, and it turned out that setting it up was a bit of a challenge. You have to program in S.A.M.E. codes (Specific Area Message Encoding) for your area. So first we had to go online to http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/indexnw.htm and drill down through Texas, then to the specific county we live in, and then these codes had to be input into the radio.

For example we live in Denton County, and had the S.A.M.E. codes show up four times on the website. The instructions for the Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100 seemed to tell us to enter these codes in four times. After we entered the codes in we looked at the instructions again. We were following the instructions for entering in multiple codes. All we had to do was enter in the code once. It turned out the codes show up on the NOAA site because several areas within the county are covered by the same code.

Within a few days, the Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100 proved its worth to us. We had been hearing all day that we might have severe weather, and watched the clouds gathering. We were sitting watching TV when the wind picked up, and we started to get some heavy rain. We lost our power, however the Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100 has a battery backup. The alarm on the weather radio went off, telling us that a funnel cloud had been sighted, but that it had not touched down at that point. After a while the alert went off telling us we had an all clear.

The Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100 does exactly what it is supposed to do. When an alert comes in, we can hear it from any room in the house. There are times when we know we have weather coming, that we know we are not going to get much sleep. We would just start to drift of when BEEP BEEP BEEP!

Well, let's face it that was what we wanted the Midland Weather/Hazards Alert Radio WR-100 to do.