What do you mean the best thread?? Are you talking like a rss feed?

I've been looking for a more streamlined an automated proccess to access to weather and alerts too.. It doesn't seem like it should be hard thing to do, but I've only gone around in circles.. Right now, it's just a matter of pulling up the weather channell website.

Bruce, maybe you are looking for a weather thread here on the website for posting new weather updates for your location. Here is a good one...

http://www.part15.us/comment/17361

I don't consider weather to be the "bread" of the 'bread and butter" of radio as much as it used to be.  Most people these days are sitting in front of or near a computer with their favorite weather source a click away, and most are also toting cell phones that probably have the current weather on the screen and advanced weather information, forcasts and live radar images a tap away, right there in their pockets.

That said, I do still do weather.  On my Part 15, I record a weather forcast before I ieave the house in the morning to go on the air at the commercial station where I work. I get the forcast off the web frm the NWS. Once I'm at work I can record an updated forcast for the station at home and upload it to my web site where my broadcast software at home is set to download that forcast automatically and play it.  If I don't change the forcast, it just downlaods the same one and plays it.  So, if there's an update, it gets it. If I'm going to be away and can't do an update I can simply delete it from the server and it downloads and plays nothing and no one knows the difference.  Like many of us my station runs automated most of the time although I do a live lunch hour show with live weather, etc. 

For emergency weather, which around here is an occasional winter storm and tons of severe thunderstorms and tornados in the summer, I use the National Weather Service.  I have a NWS radio with the alarm in it, set to activate on watches and warnings in my county.  The radio I have has a pair of terminals built in that can be connected to a relay.  I built a little relay box that changes the audio feed to the transmitter from my computer feed to the radio feed.  When a weather event is activated the NWS alarm closes the radio's relay which in turn switches my radio audio from programming to weather radio and puts the weather radio on the air.  When the weather announcement is done the relay opens in the radio and in turn switches the programming back to the computer.  So even when I'm not here severe weather information is broadcast. The weather radio and relay is also run off the UPS power supply that also runs the programming computer and transmitter for several hours in case of a power outage. it works quite well and was quite cheap. 

Tim in Bovey

Like the sound of your weather radio activating a relay to automatically feed the audio of watch/warning alerts to your transmitter..

What's the model of your weather radio with the built in terminals?

I was just talking about the local

weather at our different locations -

and that we share it on this site.

My weather here has been really obnoxious.

It's fun hearing how you all are dealing

with storms, temperatures, etc.

HOWEVER, I enjoyed the replies of how

you guys put weather reports on your

local Part 15 stations.  I never got that

far with my station.  At the height of my

Part 15 operation, I had automated IDs

and automated time of day announcements.

I didn't have a computer, so it was run by

lots of cassette machines and timers and

relays, and that sort of thing.   Anyway, very

interesting stuff!

Thanks a lot!  And thanks Carl for the thread link!

Bruce, DOGRADIO

Everytime we have high winds, which are more common now than ever, I cringe near the front escape door because a 100-foot giant oak stands right over the back corner of my house.

That tree is amazing because it has stayed in place so far, even though many neighborhood trees have come down.

Today I got the good news that the neighbors are having the tree removed in two days.

That will be one less thing to fear when bad weather comes again.

Here in the North East Ohio area, the local NOAA service makes their various audio clips available for download.  They break them up into current weather, forecast, long term forecast, maritime forecast and so on.

This is great as I have automated the process.  Every 15 minutes my system downloads from NOAA.  The file names remain the same so the Zara play list remains the same.  I always have current weather info and it plays on cue.

Zara imports current temperature and humidity from Weather Watcher Live for automated time/temperature announcements.  Weather Watcher Live also plays an audio file when a weather alert is issued.  That audio simply overides the current Zara audio notifying listeners of an alert.

And on top of being on top of the weather situation there in Cayuhoga Falls, Ohio, MRAM 1500 streams his local NOAA Weather Radio so that we are all welcome to check the weather in the middle of the midwest.

Another thing, I have found another government weather service that supplies mp3 reports for various areas of the U.S.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/streamaudio.htm#audio

Yes, that link takes you to the NOAA agencies and you can find if your area makes the audio clips available for download.

For instance, in my case if you select Ohio, Akron and look at the map which comes up you'll find Akron and other North East Ohio NOAA sites.  Hover on the Akron location and a window opens which shows the breakdown of all the various audio clips available.

If you open one, you can save the link.  From there I use WGET and Windows Task Scheduler to automate downloading of the audio files for play on demand in Zara.  You could stream them in Zara but playback is a bit more secure when the file is on your machine.

The weather radio I'm using is a Uniden Bearcat WX100. I bought a few of the years ago when the SAME alert system first came along.  I've used one at work, one in the living room, one in the ham shack, and now one with my part 15. I bet I've had 'em for 15 years -- so they may not be current models.  They have two terminals on the top (by the other jacks) that are actually for wires to go it (It's like a mini wire terminal block).  It's actually designed to use with some sort of external alerting device, such as a flashing light, vibrator, etc to alert deaf people if there's severe weather. 

I built a small box with a DPDT relay in it, with it's own wall wart power supply.  In normal position audio goes through the relay from the computer to the transmitter, when the alarm activates it closes the terminals, engages the relay and switches the audio from computer to audio from the eather radio.  When the alert ends and the radio goes back to normal, the relay releases and puts the computer back on the air. Simple and cheap. 

We use this exact same radio at the commercial stations I work for to feed NWS alerts to the EAS system -- of course we don't need the relay there as the EAS takes care of that as it identifies the audio of the alert tone. 

Tim in Bovey

At the start of the week there was a chance of thunderstorms on Thursday.

The neighbor let me know that Thursday would be the day the 100' oak tree would be removed to remove the danger to both our homes.

By Wednesday there was a 90% chance of storms on Thursday, with wind gusts possible of 31-mph.

Thursday dawned with a "normal" thunderstorm, then became sunny up to 72-degrees.

Until 3:09 PM CST, when thunder and flash rain ran KDX Worldround Radio into shutdown mode for safety. But that storm was very brief, and we resumed air streaming by 3:32 PM.

Soon, at 3:44 PM a roaring sound became audible through the walls and winds came bursting unto the scene, later reported to have exceeded 50-mph. Again KDX hit the off button.

The roaring wind caused widespread traffic accidents, about 60,000 lost power, and is still being heard although I returned to streamcasting at 6:50 PM because the wind speeds are down to the 40-mph range.

The tree is still there.

Great weather report Carl.

However my favorite weather report comes from another Carl... er.. Carlin..

“Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.”

--George Carlin from one of his 'Hippy Dippy Weatherman' skits

Here's a video of an even earlier weather report he did on "The Ed Sullivan Show"  

I liked George's Friday night forecast!

I never got to watch the Ed Sullivan Show because I worked at an FM station during that time and they didn't have a TV in the studio.

Where do such old video recordings come from?

I'm pretty sure they came from old video recorders