If your Weather Radio doesn’t work Thursday, there’s a good reason.  Thankfully the outage will not be long. 

The National Weather Service will perform an upgrade to their system Thursday which will disrupt NOAA Weather Radio to the area served by the Sioux Falls Weather Bureau.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Kyle Weisser says the outage is technological in nature.  “One of the computers that runs the transmission of our communications to the transmitters needs to have a hard drive replaced.  It’s been weakening, so we need to replace that.”

Weisser says replacing the old technology needs to be done when no severe weather threat is possible.  “Hopefully it’s going to be a two to three hour process.  Upgrading computers, changing hard drives and motherboards can sometimes get a little tricky.  We’re trying to be proactive and get these items fixed before they do fail.”

Weisser says the 13 transmitters will produce no sound for the inactive period which will affect an area from Chamberlain, South Dakota through much of eastern South Dakota to Windom and Marshall, Minnesota plus Sioux City and Storm Lake, Iowa and a small portion of northeast Nebraska.

 

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