[bargee]

Our radio went off twice yesterday,the last time at 6:45 pm for a tornado warning for Marion County in the Lake Weir area.So the Alerts were sounded.

[villages07]

Bargee...that's good to know.

Question...do you know if you are tuned in to the tower in Sumterville (Sumter county) or the one up closer to Ocala???

When they put the new tower in Sumterville, many of us switched to that and it is supposed to broadcast for all 3 counties.

Sumterville is 162.5

Ocala 162.525
Inverness 162.4
Gainesville 162.475

[Talk Host]

Originally Posted by villages07

TH..... there were severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado watches for Marion and Lake County. Nothing for Sumter county. I (and many others) have our SAME-enabled weather radios set to provide alerts for all 3 counties. IMO, the radios SHOULD have alerted on Thursday and I do plan to followup to determine if there was a problem with the transmitter tower.

What if there had been severe weather coming through in the middle of the night? Groundhog day all over again. Not needless worrying. Hard rain woke me up at 4:30, but, thankfully, no rumbles.

OP...the radios are sold in a number of places. Radio Shack, Walmart, even Publix I believe. Just make sure it is SAME capable...this lets you set which counties for which you wish to receive alerts.

One has to wonder if there is any liability on the part of NWS (National weather service)? If there is severe weather with resulting injury or damage, and they didn't or couldn't sound the alert, are they liable? They have a hidden statement that their forecasts are "advice" only. So they probably dodge the bullet.

[imbrennan]

We're in Sabal Chase and got a weather alert on the TV for Lake & Marion I think but although our weather radio is set for all 3 counties the alarm didn't go off.

[joannej]

Most of the severe storms bypassed our area heading NE. We looked at the computer weather sites and we saw the bad storms skirted TV. Perhaps that's why we didn't get the alerts on the radio. BTW, we didn't get any either. We programmed ours to alert us for severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings.

[Floridagal]

Mine never went off and it usually does when there is a storm around. I checked it and it seems to be working.

[bargee]

In answer to Vill07s question regarding broadcast frequencies.First of all we are using a Midland Model WR100.
Sumter 162.400 Same Code 012119
Marion 162.525 Same Code 012083
Lake 162.400 Same Code 012069.

Same stands for Specific Area Message Encoding.
Instructions for entering these codes can be found on page16 of the owners manual.

[villages07]

Bargee...thanks for the followup. I'm just trying to understand how all this works and figure out if something didn't work right last Thursday.

I have an Oregon Scientific weather radio, so, our programming options may be different. It is SAME enabled. Here's a helpful link from the Natl Weather Service on what counties are serviced by what transmitters:

http://www.weather.gov/nwr/CntyCov/nwrFL.htm

Based on this listing, it looks to me like you are not tuned in to the Sumterville transmitter (it is on 162.500 which is channel 5 on my radio). My radio will only let me tune in to one frequency but I can enter up to 6 county codes for that transmitter. Sumterville tower covers Lake, Marion, and Sumter and provides good signal coverage for the Villages.

It looks like you got your Marion County warning from the Ocala transmitter.

So, back to my original concern.... the NWS issues a tornado watch for Marion county. This goes out to all its stations. Those stations that broadcast to/for Marion county should have sent out an alert for receivers programmed for Marion SAME code. You got an alert from the Ocala transmitter. I did not get one from the Sumterville transmitter. The warnings are for the entire county, not just a portion of it.

So, was there a problem with the Sumterville transmitter? I haven't heard back from the NWS on the voice message I left. I also called WVLG on Friday and talked to Karl the weather guy. He said he'd look into it.

Not panicking, not hiding under the covers...just trying to understand.