Sponsors (5)
The bill meaningfully expands, modernizes, and prioritizes NOAA Weather Radio—improving lifesaving alerts for rural, Tribal, and remote communities and strengthening continuity—but it requires significant federal investment and creates implementation, operational, environmental, and technology/dependency risks that must be managed.
Rural, Tribal, and U.S. territory residents (and other remote or underserved communities) will receive broader, more equitable access to NOAA Weather Radio alerts and forecasts, increasing timely warnings for storms and other hazards.
Communities nationwide will get more reliable continuity of broadcasts because of improved maintenance, monitoring, satellite/commercial backups, and redundancy, reducing downtime and outage risk.
Local communities and emergency planners will benefit from modernization (IP-based/AWIPS upgrades, partial-county alerts) and gap identification (internet/mobile coverage), enabling more precise, relevant warnings and a clearer path to expand digital options for underserved areas.
Taxpayers and local/state governments may face higher federal costs because expanding, maintaining, and modernizing the NOAA Weather Radio network will require new funding or reallocation of resources.
Communities could become dependent on volunteer feeds, commercial partners, and new IP-based systems, creating uneven access and exposing alerts to cybersecurity, compatibility, or reliability failures (including risks during geomagnetic/EMP events) unless mitigations are funded and implemented.
If Congress does not provide adequate funding or staffing, NOAA could face operational strain—delaying other programs or causing implementation shortfalls as resources are redirected to meet the new mandates.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Directs NOAA to expand, modernize, and improve reliability and accessibility of the NOAA Weather Radio network and complete a 12-month access and capability assessment.
Introduced September 18, 2025 by Stephanie I. Bice · Last progress September 18, 2025
Directs NOAA to expand, modernize, and improve the reliability and accessibility of the NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) system nationwide. It requires maintaining service where cellular coverage is poor, improving maintenance and monitoring of transmitters and antennas, amplifying non-weather emergency messages, acquiring additional transmitters for rural/underserved areas and parks, and completing a detailed assessment of NWR access and capabilities within 12 months.