Mayors seek help with weather alert station facing issues

BENTON COUNTY, Tenn. — Local mayors are looking to elected federal officials after outages at a weather alert station.

According to the news release, the National Weather Service weather alert repeater station in Vale has gone offline at least six times since the start of 2023.

Aiming to get the issue resolved, mayors Mark Ward of Benton County, Joseph Butler of Carroll
County, and John Penn Ridgeway of Henry County sent a letter to Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Sen. Bill Hagerty, Rep. Mark Green, and Rep. David Kustoff to see what they can at the federal level.

With the repeater offline, the letter says many are left without warning of imminent hazards.

The letter read, in part:

“The primary NWS (National Weather Service) weather alert repeater for our area is located in Carroll County, within the community of Vale. This repeater, a vital resource for many residents, has gone off-line at least 6 times since the beginning of this year. Each time this has occurred, severe storms were moving into our area. This loss of service has repeatedly left a large portion of our people with no warning of imminent hazards. In rural areas, many have no cell phone service, and must rely upon their weather alert radios, which are controlled and
alerted by the by the local repeater at Vale….”

You can read the full letter here.

In early April, the National Weather Service posted to their website that the “Vale NOAA Weather Radio Transmitter Remains Offline.”

The same statement says that technicians are working to restore the broadcast, which goes over frequency of 162.450 MHz.

That was issued on April 4.

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