Smart Trail Riders Never Ride Without Donna & Craig!

By: BIG Mike McDaniel

Now you can have the weather whenever you want it, thanks to NOAA Weather Radio. NWR is a nationwide network of radio stations broadcasting continuous weather information direct from a nearby National Weather Service office.

NWR broadcasts National Weather Service warnings, watches, forecasts and other weather information 24 hours a day on special NWS radio stations.

Electronics manufacuurers have stepped to the plate with a large selection of portable devices that tune the new weather stations.

Known as the "Voice of the National Weather Service", NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) is provided as a public service by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the Department of Commerce.

NWR includes more than 670 transmitters, covering all 50 states, adjacent coastal waters, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Pacific Territories.

NWR requires a special radio receiver or scanner capable of picking up the signal. Broadcasts are found in the public service band at these seven frequencies (MHz):

162.400 162.425
162.450 162.475
162.500 162.525
162.550

An NWR radio is an "all hazards" alert system with comprehensive weather and emergency information both natural (such as earthquakes and volcano activity) and environmental (such as chemical releases or oil spills). The radios
receive warnings even in standy by mode, so you are always close to informaiton.

The forecasts and weather informantion is delivered by a computer generaded voice. What the computer voice says is programmed by the national weather service.

Before the computer took over, each of the radio stations used the forecasters in the NWS office recording the information. Some were good, most were awful. Now the computer does it all. The weather service gave the computer voice a name, Paul. Paul began in the late 1990’s on the air and was the full time voice in 2000.

Now, the National Weather Service has selected two more, improved voices for NOAA Weather Radio (NWR). These voices, called Donna and Craig, are more understandable and human- sounding than Paul, and help NWS to deliver warnings, watches, forecasts, and other hazard information more quickly and accurately.

After months of evaluating voice technologies and receiving public input, including over 19,000 Internet survey comments, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded Siemens Information
and Communication Network of Boca Raton a six hundred thousand dollar plus contract for the voice improvement software product known as Speechify. Siemens has teamed with SpeechWorks International of Boston, MA, to provide software that combines phonetic sounds with natural language modeling.

This software combines concatenated, prerecorded phonetic sounds with the emphasis and intonation of a human voice. Donna and Craig are now the main voices on the service and Paul, who sounds an awful lot like the Governor of
Californai, is limited to station breaks.

NWR Alert radios are available at a number of locations with prices beginning at less than 20 dollars. The most popular brands are Midland Radio, La Crosse Tech, Oregon Scientific, Maxon, Reecom, ShareCom and WeatherOne. A quick search of the Web turned up several locations to buy on line. Three are presented here as examples and do no represent endoresments by the author.

www.hurricane-eye.com
www.weatherradiostore.com
www.weathermeter.com

NWR Alert Radio are alo available at most Radio Shack stores.

Horseback Riding Article Source: http://www.smallbusinessadvertisingarticles.com/horsebackridingarticles

© 2006 BIG Mike McDaniel BigIdeasgroup.com BIG Mike is the Small Business Advertising Expert and author of "Business Cards - Front to Back". This book tells you how to make your business card the most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. To learn more visit tinyurl.com/j6ol3

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