Jeri Dansky1d ago

RE: https://sfba.social/@nwsbayarea_bot/116310049284669980

So now my NOAA weather radio is nonfunctional. The station that's off the air is the one I got updates from, and my radio won't pull in from any of the others. Here's hoping the radio station gets fixed soon.

#NOAA #CAwx

Show threadScout1d ago

@jeridansky

Do you think they’re understaffed due to DOGE?

Show threadJeri Dansky1d ago
@ScruffyJunco Well, all of NOAA is understaffed. I don't know if that's the reason for this outage.
Show threadAI6YR Ben1d ago
@jeridansky @ScruffyJunco For awhile, replacing components on these stations required a signature from the top of NOAA, which was bottlenecking repairs. Unclear if that has been fixed. DOGE's fault.
Show threadMatt Blaze1d ago

@ai6yr @jeridansky @ScruffyJunco These stations have ALWAYS been held together with duct tape and chewing gum, but it seems to be getting worse lately.

The Washington DC station is barely readable in much of the district, and only recently re-started sending EAS alerts.

Show threadMatt Blaze1d ago
@ai6yr @jeridansky @ScruffyJunco One of the problems is that most of the stations are essentially non-paying guests on their tower sites, with transmitter maintenance often entrusted to the good graces of the site managers, especially in more remote places.
Show threadMatt Blaze
@ai6yr @jeridansky @ScruffyJunco It's absurd that the budget for an emergency alerting system serving an entire metropolitan area is generally considerably lower than that of a single cellular base station.
Mar 29 at 7:25pmWeb
Show threadSolo la 🌍 salva a la 🌎1d ago

@mattblaze @ai6yr @jeridansky @ScruffyJunco

Rolling around in the back of my brain:

Have a #Meshtastic or #Meshcore automated station just pick up the local airport's METAR weather report and send out a compact summary. "Pick up" being over the internet or possibly by radio. Pilots and airports rely on them, so they tend to be up-to-date and the stations stay up.

At this point that might actually be more reliable than weather radios, sad to say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METAR

METAR - Wikipedia

Show threadbipolaron1d ago
@jakebrake @mattblaze @ai6yr @jeridansky @ScruffyJunco huh, on the boston mesh we actually have a public #weather channel with a bot that does this in response to "weather <zipcode>" 🙂
Show threadMatt Blaze1d ago
@jakebrake @ai6yr @jeridansky @ScruffyJunco I think the NOAA stations are less useful for disseminating weather under normal conditions (for which there are multiple other channels that are easier to access) than for the "all hazards" alerting (for which they fill a somewhat unique need, especially during emergencies).
Show threadJeri Dansky1d ago
@mattblaze @jakebrake @ai6yr @ScruffyJunco Yeah, I only use mine to get emergency broadcasts: major storms, tsunami alerts.
Show threadAI6YR Ben1d ago
@jakebrake @mattblaze @jeridansky @ScruffyJunco I already built something to do this lol