NOAA FireSafe Midland WR120 Recommendation

Weather radios

What is a weather radio and why might I want one?

• The NOAA Weather Radio system is the sole government-

operated radio system that provides people with direct

warnings of natural disasters and warnings for all

hazardous conditions that pose a threat to life and safety,

both at a local and national level.

• All Hazards Public Alert Weather radios are equipped with

a tone alarm, or a special alerting feature which can be

programmed to let you know immediately when the

National Weather Service issues a warning for your speciﬁc

area.

• Notiﬁcations like this allows you to seek safety and protect

yourself and those around you. (This alert technology is

called SAME and it is not available on regular radios even

if they receive regular audio weather channel forecasts.)

Fire Safe Occidental (FSO) has been studying, testing and

recommending NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards Public Alert

radios since early 2019. Our recommended Weather Radio that is

inexpensive and easy to conﬁgure and use is the Midland WR120.

The Midland WR120 was selected for a number of reasons:

1. NOAA tests the alert system on Wednesday around 11am

PT by issuing an alert tone and a short test message. The

WR120 will issue a warning "beep" if it has not received that

test within the last 10 days. This provides the value of the

weekly testing alert without having the user to conﬁgure it

on, then oﬀ... and it continues to check for the weekly alert

forever. We consider this a valuable feature.

Weather Radios

Midland WR120

Recommendation

(updated Aug 2020)

Table of Contents

Do you have a question about the FireSafe Midland WR120 and is the answer not in the manual?

Page 1 (updated Aug 2020) What is a weather radio and why might I want one? • The NOAA Weather Radio system is the sole government- operated radio system that provides people with direct warnings of natural disasters and warnings for all hazardous conditions that pose a threat to life and safety, both at a local and national level.
Page 2 2. The WR120 receives only Weather Radio channels, not AM/FM radio this is important because it keeps battery usage low. 3. The WR120 is an AC line powered radio with three (3) AA batteries for backup reception if the power goes oﬀ. Battery life for the WR120 is quite good;...
Page 3 conﬁgure the Weather Radio. For the SET CHANNEL option scroll up or down to 4 which is 162.475 (MHz). When done with conﬁguration (the time is displayed) you can push the big wide button labeled WEATHER/SNOOZE to turn on the weather radio channel selected;...