We’ve partnered with Midland Radio & Harps this year to offer promotional pricing on Midland’s WR-120 S.A.M.E. technology radio. S.A.M.E. technology stands for Specific Area Message Encoding and allows you to select the specific code for your county.
They’ll be available at all Harps locations coinciding with Severe Weather Awareness Week in Arkansas and Oklahoma starting on March 3rd, 2014. Pricing on the radios will be set by our partners but we anticipate promotional pricing around $29. From what I can tell it’s a pretty good deal, the exact model sells on Amazon for around $35, hardware stores for $49, or Walmart for $42, although they have it for around $31 online if you pay for shipping, so you can still save a few bucks by getting it at Harps if you’re in the market for one.
Obviously the biggest asset to having a weather radio is to stay aware of severe weather, but if you’re like me you don’t want it going off all the time. I use my the most during overnight severe weather when Joe or Tyler are on shift late at night.
Lots of the tornadoes in the south happen during at night and turning it on when you go to bed will give you a big heads up. The S.A.M.E. technology and volume controls also cut back on unnecessary warnings and inconvenience.
My advice to my family has always been: “Get a weather radio, and turn it on any night thunderstorms are in the forecast”.
I’ll have some more blog posts coming as Severe Weather Awareness Week nears on how to program them etc.
-Garrett
(*Correction: In a previous newscast last week, I incorrectly said they would be available at other locations. Harps is the only location that is offering the radios via Midland/KFSM)
