so during hurricane Laura the NWS transmitters ceased functioning. The southern one i can pick up was uncrewed and stopped working during, and the northern one, i don't remember, but it went down about 2 hours later, well before the storm was upon them.

up to that same storm i was a gung-ho let's go ham enthusiast. up to. I lived in a more direct path relative to where most of the repeater users were, so they were complaining about how hard it would be to find ice the next morning than relaying potentially life-altering information about storm tracks or whatever.

I explained to everyone as sternly as i could that this was literally an emergency, which was the primary designation of the tallest repeater in the county, and if they wanted to chit chat with chet they should move to one of the 3 other analog or 2 other digital repeaters in the same area.

nothing doing. I was the arrl tech specialist for my state, too. I completely pulled out of the hobby. I might dabble in the future with low power or beacons or whatever, but VHF/UHF i'm done with local usage.

i know you specifically said AM; however i didn't have an AM radio "handy" during the storm and power outage, etc. 9/10 the NOAA/NWS weather radio service suffices.

That's the deal with Ham radio; amateurs, enthusiasts, former SE asian jungle operators, occasional NASA relay operators, etc.

Good fun - not much chop for keeping the general public informed via cheap transister radios (although, who has those anymore?).

Our state emergancy services broadcast locally (and at strength from outside affected areas) when updates are required - they have dedicated bands and they routinely interject on the major broadcast radio networks - where fires are, when and where cyclones are expected to cross the coast, etc.

Our very local area volunteer fire units use the equivilant of ham and CB bands with reduced licences - they broadcast lightning ground strikes (at this time of year) and fire / tender / tanker updates as the season progresses (which is right now, harvest time, a lot of equipment out in tinder dry conditions subject to highly active evening lightening storms).

The iPhone / WiFi stuff is great .. but it hasn't yet passed into "considered reliable" in local culture - the networks have crashed under stress and nobody wants response to grind to a halt if a tower goes down, etc.