NOAA Weather Radio Temporarily Out Of Service

Alert radios will be inoperable during severe weather

NOAA Weather Radio Transmitters across Kentucky will be down through Wednesday due to a critical, but unavoidable systems upgrade.

According to the National Weather Service office in Louisville which sends weather alerts to all of the News40 area, the upgrade was already scheduled and cannot be moved to another date, even with the threat of impending severe weather. The outage may also affect some NOAA NEXRAD radar sites.

NWS officials say with more severe weather moving in, residents will need to find other ways to receive warnings and alerts.

One of those ways is to make sure your phone is able to receive WEA notifications. Most smartphones have WEA already built in. Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are short, geo-targeted messages sent to devices to alert users of critical local or national emergencies and imminent threats.

Of course, local radio and TV stations (such as WNKY News40) also provide real-time alerts with crawls across all channels.

WNKY News40 Weather Chief Chris Allen says “it’s unfortunate that the NWS has to do this upgrade now, especially with the threat of more severe weather forecast for Tuesday. However, every person should always have more than one way to monitor alerts and receive notifications.”

Chris says the best way to stay up-to-date and weather aware is to download the News40 Weather App, available for iPhones and Android devices. The app not only sends instant weather alerts, but also has real-time radar, forecasts that follow your device, and live streaming coverage direct to your phone or tablet. “It’s the best way to take the weather with you, even when there’s no bad weather around” Chris said.