Weather Radio Enhancements for Rathbun Lake and Ottumwa Transmitters

On or before December 6th, the National Weather Service in Des Moines will be making several enhancements to the NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) services delivered to the Rathbun Lake and Ottumwa transmitters in southern Iowa. Changes forthcoming from this enhancement include:

Separated Programming - programming will be separated on the Rathbun Lake and Ottumwa transmitters, making broadcast cycles shorter and more geographically targeted. Previously, technology limitations required broadcasts at Rathbun Lake and Ottumwa to be combined.
Reliability - broadcast relay from NWS Des Moines to the NWR in Ottumwa will change from dedicated copper phone lines to cellular. This will provide better uptime at this site.
County-Level Alerting Changes - Separated programming at the Rathbun Lake and Ottumwa transmitters will result in refinement of Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) county-based alerting. Alerts for the Ottumwa NWR will include the following counties: Davis, Keokuk, Mahaska, Monroe, and Wapello (addition of Davis, Mahaska, Monroe due to adequate coverage). Alerts for the Rathbun Lake NWR will include the following counties: Appanoose, Davis, Lucas, Monroe, Wapello, and Wayne (removal of Keokuk and Mahaska due to inability to receive the broadcast).

IMPORTANT - There will be no actions necessary for NWR users in this area. County codes remain unchanged thus alerting will not be impacted.