Tagged: weather alert

New EAS SAME Weather Alert Decoder

Over on Reddit and GitHub user cuppa-joe has released a Python based EAS SAME Alert message decoder called dsame which is compatible with the RTL-SDR. EAS is an acronym for Emergency Alert System and is a system that is most commonly used to alert the public to local weather emergencies such as tornadoes, flash floods and severe thunderstorms.

Local EAS weather alerts are encoded with the SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) protocol. They are transmitted on the local weather radio frequency in the USA and Canada and some weather radio’s are capable of decoding the EAS SAME data. Cuppa-joe’s dsame EAS decoder outputs full EAS weather messages such as:

The National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, Missouri has issued a Required Weekly Test valid until 12:30 PM for the following counties in Kansas: Leavenworth, Wyandotte, Johnson, Miami, and for the following counties in Missouri: Clay, Platte, Jackson, Cass. (KEAX/NWS)

To use the software you will still need to use a EAS demodulator such as multimon-ng which is available for Windows and Linux, and you will also need Python 2.7+ installed.

An example EAS SAME alert can be heard in the player below: