By Dawn Johnson
If you live in Athens or the surrounding counties, you may have noticed all the alert lights flashing on your NOAA Weather Radio because the weekly test didn’t happen. The National Weather Service radio station in Athens went down on Saturday.
When Classic City News contacted the National Weather Service in Peachtree City to investigate why the Athens station wasn’t broadcasting, meteorologist Laura Belanger said they often don’t know when radio stations go out of service until someone contacts them. After investigating the issue with the Athens station, Belanger said that two issues caused the transmitter to go out of service. One issue was repaired by a contractor that services the station, but the second issue was more complex and needed to be inspected by the National Weather Service. The Athens radio station may be out of service for a few days because of the Memorial Day holiday, but residents can still get weather alerts during the forecasted stormy week ahead by tuning into other weather radio stations.
The Cleveland weather radio station, WXJ53, will issue alerts for Banks, Barrow, Clarke, Hall, Jackson, Madison, Oconee, and Walton. Tune your weather radios to 162.525 to pick up weather alerts from Cleveland.
The Toccoa weather radio station, WWH24, will issue alerts for Banks, Franklin, and Hall counties. Tune your weather radios to 162.425.
Many weather radio stations have overlapping broadcasting areas. To prevent missing a hazardous weather alert when a station goes down, weather radios should have multiple channels programmed into the settings. For more information on Georgia’s weather radio stations and the SAME codes for counties, visit https://www.weather.gov/ffc/nwrnetwrk and put your cursor over the city name in red letters to bring up the coverage area, station frequency, and county SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) codes.
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