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The old weather radio codes disappeared and nobody blinked
Back in 2005 I remember tuning into the NOAA station out of Cleveland every night, and they'd rattle off those 5 digit SAME codes before every alert. Now my phone just buzzes with some app alert and nobody even knows what a tone alarm sounds like. The shift happened fast too, by 2010 my uncle who ran the local ham net was the only one still checking the broadcast. Do you think we lost something real when the localized, one way alert system got replaced by big tech notifications?
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sagelane21d ago
Respectfully, I hear you on the localized part, but I don't think we lost something real so much as we swapped one tool for a better one. My phone alerts me about a tornado warning for my exact street, not the whole county, and it does it seconds after the NWS issues it. The old SAME codes were clunky, you had to know what county you were in and decode the signal. I remember staring at a weather radio in 2008 trying to figure out why it kept going off for a storm 40 miles away. Yeah, it was one way and nobody was tracking you, but it also meant tons of false alarms that made people tune out. The tone alarm still exists too, my weather radio sits right next to my bed and it screams just fine. Do you actually miss fighting with the menu buttons to set the damn thing?
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