If your weather radio did not sound an alert or at least automatically turn itself on this morning, you absolutely need to have your settings checked.
Here are some things to know. If your radio has S.A.M.E. emergency capability (and it should or it’s time to buy a new one), realize that the first two letters stand for “Specific Area”. That means that you can program your radio to only sound an alert when the event/emergency is going to affect your county and ignore the those that are for other counties. So you need to be sure you have told your radio which counties (by code) you are interested in. The NWR radio tower for The Villages area is located in Sumterville and here is a list of the county codes to enter (one or more depending on the capability of your particular radio:
County County Code
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Citrus 12017
Hernando 12053
Lake 12069
Marion 12083
Sumter 12119
So if you never programmed your county code into your radio, or programmed it for Marion county, or entered an invalid code, your radio would not have sounded this morning because the alerts were issued for Sumter and then Lake counties.
If you find any of this difficult to deal with, you can bring your radio to the local fire station and they will check it for you.
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