No excuses no to have one...

[Radio]

There is just no longer any excuse not to have a weather radio with an alert.

It doesn't have SAME, it alerts on any warning it receives, but under $20 and about the size of my watch, there just isn't any excuse not to have a weather radio handy.

[NN5I]

Except the excuse that I don't want one.

I'm reminded of the old farm couple:

Wife: Have you seen the Almanac? I can't find it anyplace.
Husband: Nope, haven't seen it.
Wife: I wanted to look up the weather.
Husband: Reckon we'll just have to take the weather as it comes.

Me, I don't want a weather radio -- I'll just take it as it comes.

[wa8yxm]

I haVe such a radio here.. Does not work here, much of the time (Sometimes it does). (But does in other places)

I also have the Radar Now and NOAA apps on my smart phone and they DO work here

Gets a tad noisy here from time to time :) (Phone ringing with the ALARM tone and the radio doing likewise) ....

Short story: Factory in Ohio,, as it happens the owner was not in residence at the time and actually was shooting video of the tornado.

Radio went off, all the workers shut down the machines and reported to the storm shelter.. Finally the All Clear sounded. Workers came back out of the storm shelter and found nothing.
No factory
No machines
No cars (Just one big block chevy engine)
NOTHING

Total dead and inujured at that factory: ZERO

Company had enough savings to pay the workers lay off benefits till Insurance rebuilt the plant and they are all back to work now.. Complete with a brand new weather alert radio.

[Radio]

Scientists theorize there is intelligent life on Venus.

There are tornadoes on Venus.
You can't have tornadoes without trailer parks.
Trailer parks are not naturally occurring, they have to be built.
You need saw mills, factories, tires, electricity, roads and trucks to make a trailer park.
Intelligence is required to do all that.
Therefore, there must be intelligent life on Venus.

[NN5I]

Intelligence is required to do all that.

Oh, I dunno I've seen some parks that tend to disprove it ...

and I still don't want a weather radio.

[wa8yxm]

NN5I... I agree with you 2nd Post (your first I do not agree with, Forewarned is forearmed and when that box goes off and says TAKE COVER.. i tend to believe it.. Cause those who do not.. Tend to vanish like that factory I mentioned.

[NN5I]

Wolf! Wolf!

[NN5I]

The trouble with weather radios, and the reason I threw'em all away some years ago, is that they are like Matilda (from Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses).

[wa8yxm]

In this regard.. Weather radios are like GPS units.. How many times have you heard of some idiot who turns his navigation over 100% to his GPS, never uses a paper map and when the thing says "Turn right" he does so "in 800 feet" 800 feet early (In the TV ad he crashes into a florist shop as I recall).

When the weather radio goes off... I listen to the report.. I use it as a GUIDLINE.. I do not always take cover because the report is for the county and I'm in the S.W. corner of the county.. Go shouth more than 4 miles you are going to flood your carb, also the engine compartment passenger compartment and trunk (you'll be in the ocean, or rather a bay or cove).. Go west about 1 mile and it's a new county.

So if the storm is hitting say Hinesville moving S.E.. I do not care Jessup (Different county Headed S.E I do care.

But you do not let the radio rule, you use it as a data source and if you plot the path and you are in the middle of it (or just off to one side or the other.. THEN you take cover. Cause there is a good chance where you are will cease to exist like that Plant in Ohio did.

[NN5I]

Of course. The WX radio is a source of information, not a guide to behavior. It's like the GPS, as in your excellent simile. Still, it interrupted me when I wasn't seeking its information, and for that I banished it to the landfill.

I intended to use a WX radio to get forecasts, but I got tired of waiting through 15 minutes or more of -- for example -- tide predictions, expected wave heights, and so forth, none of which was relevant, say, to my hopes for good shooting weather to go to the range.

The WX radio serves, generally, much too large an area to serve me well. But for some people it's a useful and even essential tool. ARES/RACES/Skywarn enthusiasts, for example. Note that I didn't say it was useless or that others shouldn't want one -- only that I didn't want one. Still don't.

Perhaps I'm a bit inconsistent, though. I use a GPS often -- nearly always, when on a trip -- and have been led astray on rare occasion, such as to an expressway in Mississippi that hadn't been built yet. But, being the suspicious, untrusting old curmudgeon I am, I didn't get into trouble.

I'm glad it saved the folks in Ohio -- but I have known lots more people who have been hit by lightning (one) than caught in a tornado (zero), even though many (about ten) of my loved ones live in Moore, OK and don't have WX radios. Tornado deaths, lightning injuries, and the like, are exceedingly rare events demographically. Many more people are killed in airliners than in tornadoes, but that's a very remote possibility anyhow. Going to Europe in an airliner is much safer than going to the supermarket in a Classic Thunderbird. My first Judo coach was hit by lightning on his back porch. Some thought it made him a bit punchy, but those of us who knew him well knew that ol' Coach was always punchy. He'd been a semipro boxer in his youth.

When someone invents a device that'll tell me when some teenager, showing off, is about to smack my little pickup with his own little pickup, I'll buy. That's a much less remote hazard.