SAME codes: find your county's, and program it right
A SAME code is the six-digit county identifier that lets a weather radio sit silent until a warning names your county. Yours takes seconds to find with the finder, which carries NWS data for every US county, and about five minutes to program. Here's what the digits mean, how to set them, and which alerts they control.
What the six digits mean
SAME stands for Specific Area Message Encoding: the digital header the National Weather Service attaches to every alert, naming the counties it applies to. A radio programmed with your code compares each incoming header against it and alarms only on a match.
The code itself is built from standard federal county numbering, in the form P-SS-CCC:
- P - almost always 0, meaning the whole county. A nonzero first digit marks a subdivision, used for a handful of very large counties that NWS splits for alerting.
- SS - the two-digit state number (FIPS code).
- CCC - the three-digit county number within that state.
An example from the data: Sedgwick County, Kansas (Wichita, in the heart of tornado country) is 020173 - 0 for the whole county, 20 for Kansas, 173 for Sedgwick.
Find yours
- The NOAA Weather Radio Finder returns your county's code alongside the transmitter frequency you'll need in the same look-up.
- Prefer to read down a list? Every county's code and frequency is set out state by state.
Both draw from the NWS county coverage listing, the same file the agency publishes.
Program it: the five minutes that make the radio worth owning
(What the radio actually does with these codes - the data burst, the county match, the alarm - is covered in how weather alert radios work, along with why one beeps unexpectedly.)
The exact menu wording varies by brand, but the procedure is the same everywhere:
- Find the SAME, "county code," or "location" setting in the radio's menu. On the common Midland WR120B (Amazon), it's Menu, then Set Location.
- Choose single or multiple locations. Enter your county's six digits.
- Add the neighboring county your weather usually comes from. Across most of the country that means your western or southwestern neighbor; a tornado warning there is your few minutes of notice. Most radios accept several codes.
- Set the broadcast frequency for your transmitter if the radio doesn't find it on its own.
- Wait for the weekly test (most transmitters test Wednesday, late morning) and confirm the alarm actually fires. Until you've heard it trigger, treat the radio as unprogrammed.
Skipping this setup is the classic weather-radio failure: out of the box, most units alert for every county the transmitter reaches, the radio cries wolf for weather two counties away, and within a month it's unplugged. The reason SAME exists is to make the alarm rare enough to trust.
The event codes: what the radio can alarm on
The same header that names your county names the event. Each alert type has a three-letter code, and better radios let you choose which ones alarm - keep the warnings, quiet the rest. The ones you'll actually encounter:
| Code | Event |
|---|---|
| TOR | Tornado Warning |
| SVR | Severe Thunderstorm Warning |
| FFW | Flash Flood Warning |
| TOA | Tornado Watch |
| SVA | Severe Thunderstorm Watch |
| WSW | Winter Storm Warning |
| RWT | Required Weekly Test |
A watch means conditions could produce the event; a warning means it's happening or imminent. (The distinction, and why it matters, is covered in the SKYWARN® guide.) A sensible configuration alarms on warnings, displays watches silently, and lets the weekly test through until you've confirmed the radio works, then silences it.
Which radio to put the code in is the smaller decision; the buyer's guide covers it in three features.