WXL23: NOAA Weather Radio for Lead, South Dakota
WXL23 is the NOAA Weather Radio transmitter at Lead (transmitter at Terry Peak), broadcasting on 162.525 MHz at 300 watts. It carries the National Weather Service Rapid City office's broadcast and covers 8 counties, each listed below with the SAME code an alert radio needs to wake for that county and stay quiet for the rest.
| Callsign | WXL23 |
|---|---|
| Frequency | 162.525 MHz |
| Transmitter | Lead (transmitter at Terry Peak), South Dakota |
| Power | 300 watts |
| Forecast office | NWS Rapid City |
| Status | Normal (NWS data, July 2026) |
Marine radios often label 162.525 MHz as WX7, but WX channel numbers vary by brand - go by the frequency.
Counties WXL23 covers
| County | State | SAME code | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carter | Montana | 030011 | |
| Butte | South Dakota | 046019 | |
| Harding | South Dakota | 046063 | |
| Lawrence | South Dakota | 046081 | |
| Pennington | South Dakota | 046103 | ALL |
| Pennington | South Dakota | 446103 | WEST |
| Crook | Wyoming | 056011 | |
| Weston | Wyoming | 056045 | NE |
A county marked with a note (for example partial coverage) is served for that portion only. 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
WXL23 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 WXL23 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 WXL23
Any receiver that tunes 162.525 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 South Dakota transmitter, county and SAME code: NOAA Weather Radio in South Dakota. 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.