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Severe Weather
Weather Sirens
A weather warning siren is located in the downtown shopping district at City Hall. The weather siren is used only for tornado warnings. It is tested at noon every Saturday during the spring and summer months. If you hear the siren at any other time, take cover immediately as a tornado has been spotted moving towards the Oconomowoc area.
Programming of Weather Radio
The National Weather Service Site has a great deal of information about weather radios and programming them. If you “Google” to “Weather Radio S.a.m.E. codes” it will take you to the site as well.
The Specific Area Message Encoding (“S.a.m.E.”) codes allow you to tailor your weather radio to receive information from just the counties you specify by the county code you enter in your weather radio receiver. Below are the most common S.a.m.E. codes for our area:
COUNTY S.a.m.E. Code
Additional Adjacent Counties:
Remember that most severe weather usually approaches from the southwest and moves northeast. Program your S.a.m.E. codes to reflect that.
Remember that severe weather can and does approach from ANY direction too, but from the southwest is most common.
Recommendation is to not program too many county codes into your radio (no more than 3) so as to not overload your radio when multi-county warnings occur.
ABOVE ALL, WHEN A WARNING IS RECEIVED, TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!
A weather warning siren is located in the downtown shopping district at City Hall. The weather siren is used only for tornado warnings. It is tested at noon every Saturday during the spring and summer months. If you hear the siren at any other time, take cover immediately as a tornado has been spotted moving towards the Oconomowoc area.
Programming of Weather Radio
The National Weather Service Site has a great deal of information about weather radios and programming them. If you “Google” to “Weather Radio S.a.m.E. codes” it will take you to the site as well.The Specific Area Message Encoding (“S.a.m.E.”) codes allow you to tailor your weather radio to receive information from just the counties you specify by the county code you enter in your weather radio receiver. Below are the most common S.a.m.E. codes for our area:
COUNTY S.a.m.E. Code
- Waukesha 055133
Additional Adjacent Counties:
- Walworth 055127
- Washington 055134
- Milwaukee 055079
- Jefferson 055055
- Dodge 055027
Remember that most severe weather usually approaches from the southwest and moves northeast. Program your S.a.m.E. codes to reflect that.
Remember that severe weather can and does approach from ANY direction too, but from the southwest is most common.
Recommendation is to not program too many county codes into your radio (no more than 3) so as to not overload your radio when multi-county warnings occur.