WZ2500: NOAA Weather Radio for Sand Mtn, Virginia
WZ2500 is the NOAA Weather Radio transmitter at Sand Mtn (transmitter at Wythe County), broadcasting on 162.450 MHz at 300 watts. It carries the National Weather Service Blacksburg office's broadcast and covers 11 counties, each listed below with the SAME code an alert radio needs to wake for that county and stay quiet for the rest.
| Callsign | WZ2500 |
|---|---|
| Frequency | 162.450 MHz |
| Transmitter | Sand Mtn (transmitter at Wythe County), Virginia |
| Power | 300 watts |
| Forecast office | NWS Blacksburg |
| Status | Normal (NWS data, July 2026) |
Marine radios often label 162.450 MHz as WX5, but WX channel numbers vary by brand - go by the frequency.
Counties WZ2500 covers
| County | State | SAME code |
|---|---|---|
| Alleghany | North Carolina | 037005 |
| Bland | Virginia | 051021 |
| Carroll | Virginia | 051035 |
| City of Galax | Virginia | 051640 |
| City of Radford | Virginia | 051750 |
| Giles | Virginia | 051071 |
| Grayson | Virginia | 051077 |
| Montgomery | Virginia | 051121 |
| Pulaski | Virginia | 051155 |
| Smyth | Virginia | 051173 |
| Wythe | Virginia | 051197 |
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
WZ2500 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 WZ2500 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 WZ2500
Any receiver that tunes 162.450 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 Virginia transmitter, county and SAME code: NOAA Weather Radio in Virginia. 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.