NOAA All Hazards Radio has been around since 1960. I have a Midland Weather Radio receiver in my house because we live in a rural area. We certainly do have weather events; Severe Thunderstorms being the most common. We have also had Tornados, Floods, Hurricanes, Winter Storms and Blizzards. It is useful to have, especially when the cell phone and/or public network go down.
Our brothers to the north have is similar system: Weather Radio Canada
That system operates on the same frequencies and manner as the NOAA All Hazards Radio system.
It appears that the Canadian government is discontinuing service as of March 16, 2026 and replacing it with an app. That seems short sighted to me; I don’t know how many users of Weather Radio Canada there are, but I’d bet there are quite a few. It also assumes that everyone in Canada has a smart phone. Given the economy and the expense of a new iPhone (or Android), I think this is far from the case.
I did get thinking about what would happen here if the NOAA system went away. Could the Emergency Alert System still get reliable local alerts out over the air? I know that most of the radio and TV stations in this area still monitor the NOAA frequencies as a third source for local activations. Over the years, EAS activation for things like Tornado Warnings has saved quite a few lives, especially out in the mid west.
Hopefully, our government officials are smarter….
The inconvenience goes beyond just a smartphone app. There are many remote areas of the country where there is no cell phone service, but the weather radio can still pick up a signal.
At my full time job in Boston at a major TV station, I monitor it on our Dasdec EAS. (Along with the two LP1s in the market).
I didn’t until I was assigned a Subaru as a company car for a previous job.
I wish other auto manufacturers would include WX radios into the infotainment systems.
Lorne, my thoughts exactly. I spent some summers on the lakes in Ontario, cell service was not great. The weather radio did work.
Mike, most of the stations around here do the same. It is a good source for local emergency information.
Barry, I had to run outside and look at my Subaru’s infotainment system. Alas, it does not seem to have a weather radio installed.
One other thought; the NOAA folks could work on upgrading their alert system. The county I live in is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. My Midland SAME receiver decodes alerts for the county FIPS code. There is the ability to break those FIPS into ten subsections. That would be nice, as I would get fewer alerts for things that are not happening in my location. Another thought; weather receiver manufactures should install an inexpensive GPS receiver which will automatically set the FIPS and sub section codes, thus making it much easier for the average person to use.
I was going to comment about how I’ve always been surprised that Congress has never mandated WX radio in vehicles, nor do manufacturers include it – but then I saw the comment above from Barry and learned that at least one manufacturer includes it, or at least did; several Outback models had it but Subaru discontinued it, according to a quick search I just did.
Unfortunately public safety doesn’t exactly have a big lobby cash machine behind it, and thus there has never been any serious effort in Congress to do this (at least that I could find.) The irony, of course, is that WX radio’s biggest advantage, that it works when cell towers and internet are down or unavailable, is exactly when you’d need it most, and that’s the argument being completely ignored by the auto industry right now.
I remember when the NWS tried to divide the counties into the 10 sections. It was one alert after another as the storms moved across
each county in our coverage area. it clogged up all the subchannels
with overlapping alerts and the poor MCR op had no idea what to do.
I had to pull the plug on it that day.
They stopped doing that shortly after.
The radios in cars are just software now. It would be easy to have it.
Apparently the Canadian government hasn’t paid attention to how well cellular holds up during natural disasters.