Human on the NOAA Radio

[wstarcraze]

Severe T-storm watch was issued. Instead of a synthesized voice a human voice read the watch info. The human voice is still being heard when the watch is run through the listening cycle. All other products still have the synthesized voice. I have a video of it. Might upload if possible.

[wstarcraze]

Update. The Grand Rapids NWS office issued a Special Marine Warning for an area under the jurisdiction of the Detroit / Pontiac NWS office. Something isn't right.

[TWCDude]

Something tells me that the NWS was using the wrong feed. You live in Grand Rapids, correct? Detroit is quite a ways east of where you live.

[wstarcraze]

No. I live in the Detroit/Pontiac Listening area. Detroit/Pontiac should've issued the warning.

[wxmediafan]

When I visited my local National Weather Service office a month ago, one of the meteorologists mentioned that sometimes a meteorologist or expert from the NWS will talk on the weather radio live, or record their own voice.

[wstarcraze]

Oh ok.

[phw115wvwx]

Most of the time, computers are controlling the weather radio.  However, if they fail, the backup is going live on the radio and speaking.

[wstarcraze]

Well the computerized voices were operating just fine on all the other forecast products. It was just the Severe T-storm Watch that had a human voice talking.

[Zach]

For a while in summer 2009 when a warning was issued here, Toms voice wasnt saying the warning but it was Perfect Paul instead

[TWCToday]

With tropical systems there are usually human updates in my area

[wstarcraze]

For a while in summer 2009 when a warning was issued here, Toms voice wasnt saying the warning but it was Perfect Paul instead

I have a vid of a malfunction that occured on Ohio's weather radio system where Paul was on one product then was gradually on all the nws products for about 30 to 50 minutes.

[Mike M]

I haven't heard any human voices here in nearly five years now. The last product the human voice did here was the station ID, and that became narrated by the computer voice sometime in late '05 or early '06. Marine forecasts, tides, and marine-related alerts are done by Donna, and all other products are done by Tom. Paul is only used to announce the time every 10 minutes, and on very rare occurrences doing other products if Tom or Donna were under maintenance.

Interesting fact: My office in Mount Holly, NJ was the first to introduce the new computer generated voices (Tom and Donna) in 2000.

[Eric]

Last week a severe thunderstorm watch was broadcast by a human voice.  Actually, the update several hours later was also done by a human.  All other voices were computerized.

[P71nnacle]

You'd be surprised how many times we had to fix messages in NWR. A little story for you folks: *fade out*

We had a feed of the Weatheradio from Pittsburgh in the bathroom when I was at the office. So, I'm listening, and so I hear on the local observation something to the tune of "Pittsburgh: Sunny and 75andninetystorm degrees" or something like that. So, after I did my thing, I went out and said to the upper air analyst "Have a listen to this, I think there was an error". And somehow, some garbled text got into the NWR, origin unknown. It was a bit hard to recognize, but all it was was an & and a couple of letters. *fade in* So don't always count on sure things, like NWR.

[Eric]

We had a feed of the Weatheradio from Pittsburgh in the bathroom

I'll readily admit to occasionally listening to my weather radio for "leisure."  However, a feed of electronic voices chattering away in the bathroom... I'd start using the hedge out back.