KWO39: NOAA Weather Radio for Chicago, Illinois
KWO39 is the NOAA Weather Radio transmitter at Chicago (transmitter at Wood Dale), broadcasting on 162.550 MHz at 300 watts. It carries the National Weather Service Chicago office's broadcast and covers 5 counties, each listed below with the SAME code an alert radio needs to wake for that county and stay quiet for the rest.
| Callsign | KWO39 |
|---|---|
| Frequency | 162.550 MHz |
| Transmitter | Chicago (transmitter at Wood Dale), Illinois |
| Power | 300 watts |
| Forecast office | NWS Chicago |
| Status | Normal (NWS data, July 2026) |
Marine radios often label 162.550 MHz as WX1, but WX channel numbers vary by brand - go by the frequency.
Counties KWO39 covers
| County | State | SAME code |
|---|---|---|
| Cook | Illinois | 017031 |
| DuPage | Illinois | 017043 |
| Lake | Illinois | 017097 |
| Lake | Indiana | 018089 |
| Porter | Indiana | 018127 |
Program the six-digit code into your radio's SAME location list - the SAME code guide walks through it, and how alert radios work explains what the radio does with it.
A radio that will use this code
KWO39 alerts are only useful inside a radio you can program the s codes above into. Two that do it, for two different jobs.
At home, always on
Midland WR120B. Mains desk radio with battery backup. Program the SAME code from the table and it stays silent until your county specifically is warned, then wakes you.
Check current price (Amazon)In the bag or the car
Midland ER310. Crank, solar and USB, with a flashlight. Receives KWO39 the same as anything else; it does not do SAME alerting. The one still working on day three of an outage.
Check current price (Amazon)Hearing KWO39
Any receiver that tunes 162.550 MHz FM can listen: scanners, VHF ham radios, marine sets, or a software-defined receiver. What those do not do is wake you at 3 a.m. - for that you want a dedicated radio with SAME alerting, covered in the buyer's guide.
Every Illinois transmitter, county and SAME code: NOAA Weather Radio in Illinois. Or look any county up with the finder.
Sources:
- “NWR County Coverage Listings”. weather.gov. Archived from the original on 2026-07-19. Retrieved 2026-07-16. Every figure on this page - frequency, transmitter site, power, operational status, and county SAME codes - is from this dataset. Transmitters move, change power, and go down for maintenance; verify locally before you rely on it.