We have a few weather radios in our house: one is in our emergency kit; two are builtin to some 2-way radios in the emergency kit; and two more are builtin to a pair of general use 2-way radios I have around the house.  You’d think that would be enough, huh?

Nope. After the severe weather we had last week, I started my search for a weather radio/alarm that could wake us up in the middle of the night if something popped up we weren’t aware of.  Since the last time I looked at these things, a few years ago, they have come out with a cool new feature called S.A.M.E. (Specific Area Message Encoder) which means the alarm will only go off for events in your county.  A definite plus since I’d rather sleep when a severe thunderstorm is rolling through Champaign, for example.  Even better yet, some of the radios/alarms today can even let you filter out certain alert types – I care about tornado warnings, but thunderstorm watches?  Not so much..

For the curious, I ended up with the Reecom R-1650.  It was delivered today and is now all configured.  Once I get some backup batteries into it, I’ll move it upstairs to its resting place on my nightstand.