KHA53 Receiver Dies After 15+ Years of Continuous Service

After more than 15 years of receiving KHA53 Weather Radio for the purpose of continuously streaming the signal over the internet, our Midland WR-300 weather radio suddenly died this week. The stream was offline for about 12 hours this past Monday (June 15). 

We are currently using an old Radio Shack scanner to keep the feed up and running, but we will be testing the most likely replacement radio for the stream - a Rocam CR1031 later this week. Our search for a replacement radio requires audio fidelity to ensure clarity and good reception. Also essential is the ability to defeat EAS warnings, which tend to turn the audio off after receiving a warning message or overlay a warning siren over the radio broadcast. 

This streamed broadcast is most frequently accessed by those living south of Rochester in the hilly Finger Lakes region, where VHF reception can be difficult, and, surprisingly, by some boaters on Lake Ontario who can access the signal via 5G mobile data service. If you get good reception at home, it is always wise to have your own weather radio to receive immediate weather watches and warnings. But if you live outside of the area and want to keep tabs on the weather here, the stream is very convenient for all.

Thanks for your patience and ongoing support of this service. 

KHA53 Stream Restored and Improved

After several days of downtime due to a hardware failure, we have resumed streaming of KHA53 Rochester. The audio has been slightly improved, but further work is yet to be done. There is a noticeable hum we are hoping to reduce or eliminate.

You can find our stream on NOAAWeatherRadio.org or the Broadcastify platform.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Hard Drive Failure - Feed Temporarily Down

Early in the morning of January 25, 2021 the hard drive on the machine powering our feed failed. This brought the feed down. We are using this opportunity to change hardware and the computer’s operating system. This could take a day or two to complete before the stream resumes. We apologize for the inconvenience. We will be back up and running as soon as possible.

Scheduled Downtime - May 15, 2018

The KHA-53 feed will be down from approximately 11:00am - 4pm EDT on Tuesday, May 15, 2018 for scheduled maintenance. Thank you for your understanding.

Happy Holidays - Audio Improvements & Backup Stream Now Available

We wish listeners Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a grand New Year.

As of this date, we have doubled the bitrate of the KHA53 stream on NOAAWeatherRadio.org, which should improve fidelity without consuming excessive amounts of data for those streaming from mobile devices.

We are aware of some audio anomalies on the stream and are working on them. When apparent, these anomalies cause brief interruptions in the stream which causes some audio to drop. We believe we have identified the cause of these issues and have corrected most of them.

Remember if one stream is down, we offer a backup here. From this link, you can scroll through the public safety radio feeds and find us. You can also listen to various fire, police, and ambulance services serving Monroe County/Rochester, N.Y. on this page.

If you notice both streams down, please report this to: kha53@phillipdampier.com for investigation.

Remember, for instant access to important weather information including watches and warnings, you can access NOAA Weather Radio live 24 hours a day on these frequencies in  western and central New York:


City of Service/Antenna Site   Callsign   Freq.(MHz)  Power/Watts

Buffalo/North Boston           KEB98      162.550     600 watts
Rochester/Baker Hill           KHA53      162.400     500 watts
Spencerport                    WNG539     162.525     300 watts
Frewsburg/Mayville             WNG541     162.525     175 watts
Cattaraugus/Little Valley      WWG32      162.425     100 watts
Syracuse/Makyes Road           WXL31      162.550     1000 watts
Binghamton                     WXL38      162.475     1000 watts
Elmira/Hawley Hill             WXM31      162.400     1000 watts
Call Hill                      WXN29      162.425     300 watts 
Mt. Washington/Bath            WXN55      162.450     300 watts
Ithaca                         WXN59      162.500     1000 watts
Watertown/Miser Hill           WXN68      162.475     100 watts
Lyons                          WZ2536     162.475     250 watts

We're Back - New URL to Bookmark!

With thanks to one of our readers, we have been able to get back online.

We have heard from multiple sources that Weather Underground, which has supported weather radio streaming services like ours for about a decade, is closing down the service officially on March 1, 2017. It has effectively been down already for over a week and there is every indication it will never be back.

We consider this service useful and we have loyal listeners who promptly notify us whenever the stream does go down. We have tried to provide reliable service over the nearly 10 years it has been online and we intend to keep going. For the moment, the feed is up and running again at a new link you should bookmark:

[Link updated 2/21/17 - 11:42am EST]

NOAA Weather Radio KHA53 Rochester, NY (http://wxradio.dyndns.org:8000/rochester.mp3)

This won't be an elegant solution at the moment but it will work for most browsers. We are still investigating how to update the myriad of apps and other services like Scanner Radio and TuneIn on how to find our new feed. Many of our listeners hear the stream through third-party apps. We will continue to update you with our progress, and thanks for being patient.

Another Extended Outage

All weather radio feeds hosted by Weather Underground, including ours, have been down for the last several days. They are aware of the problem but we do not yet have an ETA on when this will be fixed. This is affecting ALL 160+ weather radio feeds across the country, so it is a very serious outage. We wish we had an easy solution for this issue, but we do not. We can only hope that Weather Underground will continue to be a reliable streaming partner in the future, as they have generally been for the decade we have been providing this service to the public.

Our apologies. We are frustrated as well.