Emergency officials say that area NOAA weather radio channels will be offline for several days next week while the alert system is going through maintenance.

According to the Bartholomew County Emergency Management Department, the outage will affect all the weather radio broadcasts that cover central Indiana. The outage will start on Monday and is expected to last through at least Wednesday, however it could go as long as Thursday or Friday while the channels go through a mandatory system upgrade.

Shannan Cooke, director of emergency management for the county, says that you should make sure you have several ways to receive emergency weather notifications while the radio system is down. She suggested signing up for the Everbridge alert system in Bartholomew County, using the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s or American Red Cross mobile apps, and listening to local news stations.

You can find a link to sign up for the Everbridge alert system on our website. Once you sign up and identify which types of alerts you want to receive, in the case of an emergency it will send important alerts by phone call, text message or email.