Weather radio alerts in Hennepin County will be more geographically specific next year

Severe thunderstorms rolled across southern Hennepin County on Wednesday afternoon, and NOAA weather radios broadcast alerts in Bloomington, Richfield and Edina.

Owners of weather radios in Corcoran, Rogers and Champlin in the northern part of the county received the warnings, too, even though the storms delivering high winds and hail were more than 20 miles away.

Next year, that won’t happen.

With approval from the National Weather Services’ headquarters and with software system upgrades, Hennepin County will become one of a handful of counties across the country with the ability to localize warnings rather than broadcasting them to wide geographic areas, said Todd Krause, warning coordination meteorologist with the Weather Service in Chanhassen.

“Part of the benefit is that there will be less opportunity for confusion,” Krause said. “If a radio and an outdoor siren go off, that promotes confidence.”

Sprawling St. Louis County in northern Minnesota has had permission from the Weather Service and Federal Communications Commission to experiment with broadcasting geographic-specific warnings since the 2000s, said Joe Moore, the warning coordinator in the Weather Service’s Duluth office. He said it has been received well.

“If you are in Duluth and the tornado is in Hibbing, it’s silly for us to let you know about that. You want to know if it’s going to affect me,” Moore said.

Weather Service offices in Glasgow, Mont.; Rapid City, S.D.; Tucson, Ariz.; Las Vegas and San Francisco have instituted what is called Partial County Alerting. Hennepin County has pushed for years to join that list and allow weather radio owners in Minnesota’s most populous county to receive warnings only when inclement weather is in or approaching where they live, said Eric Waage, the county’s emergency management director.

“We think it makes sense,” he said. “With a big and broad area, there is more opportunity for people to feel they have been false alarmed. We want to blaze a trail for other counties.”

Waage said Hennepin County has been divided into six zones with each assigned a specific code. Weather radio owners can program their radios with a new code covering their city or multiple zones. They also can continue receiving notifications of warnings issued anywhere in the county.

About 15% of metro-area residents have weather radios, according to a recent University of Minnesota household survey. That’s more than the 7% national average, Waage said.

“They are like a sentinel listening for a warning,” he said.

In a separate venture, Hennepin County is also upgrading its outdoor warning sirens so that they, like weather radios, will sound only in areas struck by bad weather.

“We get lots of calls from people asking why the sirens are going off,” Waage said, when dangerous weather is far away. “We are constantly trying to make things more timely and geographically relevant, to be as specific as possible.”

Warnings will continue to be disseminated by local TV and radio stations, and over social media platforms.

Krause said the Weather Service issues warnings for severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, flash floods and hail, and plans to have the targeted warnings ready for the 2025 storm season.

“We are working in tandem [with Hennepin] to deliver a better warning system and limit where warnings go out,” he said.