NOAA Weather Radio SAME Technology

With Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) technology, life-saving messages broadcast on NWR can be targeted to a specific area. Many NWR products contain a special digital code with information about the type of event, the applicable geographic area for the event, and how long the event is valid. This allows receivers equipped with SAME technology to be programmed by the user to only alarm for weather and other emergency events in specific, desired counties, thereby eliminating unwanted alerts for areas that are not of concern to the listener. You will need the 6-digit SAME codes below for the counties you wish to program into your receiver.

SAME information can be heard audibly as 3 bursts of digital static (click to hear an example) at the beginning of the product transmission, followed by a 10-second broadcast of the 1050 Hz warning alarm tone (click to hear an example) which precedes the voice message part of the broadcast. Many NOAA Weather Radio receiver models can be set to a muted "standby" mode and will turn on when the alerting message is received. Depending on the receiver brand and model, the receiver will either be activated by the SAME code or the 1050 Hz warning alarm tone. Upon activation, some receiver models may have a flashing light or other visual attention signal. In any case, the 10-second 1050 Hertz warning alarm tone serves as an audible attention signal.

Don't see your county listed above? Click here for a national database of all county SAME codes by state.