Weather Season at SCRTC

Weather Alerting!

Helping you out during storms . . .

With the unpredictable nature of weather and the recent outbreak of storms and tornados in our region, most people are concerned about how to stay informed and alerted during threatening weather conditions. 

For the last several years, the Federal Communication Commission, FCC, has mandated that every US cable television systems pass Emergency Alert System messages, also known as EAS, to every subscriber.  (This system was updated from the older Emergency Broadcast System of 70’s and 80’s to include technologies such as cable television.)  Because the technology differs among the cable systems, there are several approved methods to alert cable subscribers.  South Central’s system uses the method of force tuning.  Basically this means that when a message is issued for our coverage area, our system will force tune all video streams to channel 1, our local weather radar channel and displays the message as a crawl along the upper portion of the screen along with an audio version of the message.  Once the message is complete, the system will automatically return the video stream to previously viewed channel.

Some of our folks have made a great suggestion on how to use our EAS system.  If you don’t own a weather radio or for some reason your weather radio does not work, one simple solution is to leave your South Central connected television on, but on a blank channel before you go to bed. Turn up the volume to a level that you feel will be loud enough to wake you.  If there is an alert that affects your county, your television will tune away from the blank channel to channel 1 and provide alert notification with audio. Of course, it is best to sleep in a room that is a television connected to South Central Digital Television service.

If you have a weather radio here are the frequencies for the South Central area:

For more information, go to http://www.weather.gov/nwr/CntyCov/nwrKY.htm.

Weather radios are great, inexpensive investments and will alert you of a pending storm or disaster, yet for some, the idea of programming modern weather radios can be a daunting task.   For those that don’t yet own a weather radio, South Central may be able to help out those in a pinch when it comes to weather and natural disasters warnings.