Midland WR120B Weather Radio

For the night a warning goes out after everyone is asleep, the Midland WR120B is the radio that stays plugged in on a nightstand or a kitchen counter and goes off by itself for your county. It is not the radio for a week without power. It has no hand crank, so for the long outage keep a crank radio beside it, like the Midland ER310 in our NOAA weather radio guide. The WR120B is Midland’s WR120 in box packaging, so Midland’s WR120 FAQ and support pages apply to it. Two WR120 owners say theirs can be set to alert for just their county, and a third, who cannot hear the tornado sirens with the windows shut, says it warned them of an incoming tornado.

Every house has one clock that blinks 12:00 after every power cut. Nobody has set it since the last storm, and nobody is going to.

The WR120B will sit next to that clock with a duller and more useful job. It waits. Midland says it is designed to stay plugged in, and that as soon as the Weather Service issues a watch or warning for your area, it notifies you on its own, with a siren. The kids will forget it is there. On the night it matters, nobody has to remember to turn it on.

Your county, not the whole transmitter

This is the reason to own a WR120B. A Weather Service transmitter covers a wide area, and the Weather Service office in Paducah says receivers without S.A.M.E. “alert for emergencies anywhere within the coverage area of the NWR transmitter, typically several counties, even though the emergency could be well away from the listener.”

The ER310 is one of those. Midland says it “does not have the option to customize alerts” and that with weather alerts on, it “will receive all alerts for your area, including the weekly test.” One ER310 owner on r/CBUSWX found theirs going off for thunderstorms as far as Dayton and asked for one that would sound only for their own county, and only for tornado warnings. Two owners in the thread answered with the WR120, a third told the story of the tornado it warned them about, and the original poster ordered one.

Do the setup on a quiet evening, not during the first storm. There is no code to type: you pick the county from a list. In one owner’s video, setup goes by state, then county. In another reviewer’s video, it runs through the language (Midland offers English, Spanish or French), the state and county, the alert type and the events. Midland’s FAQ adds the rule that matters most: the first county you program should always be the one your home is in.

Then decide how many counties. Midland’s programming guide offers Single, for your own county alone, which it recommends for most users, and Multiple, for your county and up to 24 surrounding counties served by the same transmitter. Live near a county line? Multiple is the setting to look at. A third choice, Any, sounds for every county on the channel, and Midland warns it can bring many false alarms for events far from you.

Last, tune it to a station that carries your county. Midland warns that on a station that does not, “your radio won’t activate, even if the broadcast is audible.” The Weather Service’s county listing gives each county’s S.A.M.E. code with the frequency and call sign of the transmitter that covers it, and its station search shows the stations near a city, an address or a ZIP code, and the area each one covers.

Choosing what is allowed to wake you

The menu is where the household argument gets settled. Midland describes a user-selectable warning system: under Set Events, you can choose All Default, All On or All Off, or edit single events. With every event off, Midland says the radio still receives Tornado Warnings, as NOAA rules require; it will not sound for severe thunderstorms, flash floods and the rest.

How it wakes you is a separate setting. Midland lists three alert types: Tone sounds an alarm, Voice sounds a tone for 8 seconds and then speaks the alert, and Display only shows it on the screen with a flashing light, which will not wake anyone. One owner whose household had just bought the WR120B in 2019 liked choosing the event types but found those 8 seconds of loud beeping frightening at night.

A commenter on r/prepping who recommends the WR120B makes the case for editing: you can turn off the flood alarm if you live on top of a hill, and a spouse who keeps getting woken by needless alarms will unplug it. That second point is not a joke. A radio in the back of a drawer wakes nobody.

The weekly test is quiet unless you ask for it. Midland says its radios start in a silent test mode, where only the Advisory light and a message appear. To hear the test, set the events to All On, or switch on Required Weekly Test under Edit Events. The ER310 works the other way and sounds for the test every week. A test you can hear is also a weekly sign that the siren still sounds, so pick the setting your family will put up with.

When the wall power goes out

With three AA cells installed, Midland says the radio keeps working when the wall power is lost. Its FAQ gives the battery-only runtime for the WR120: about two days of standby on basic alkaline cells and about three on high-quality AA cells. Playing the weather broadcast nonstop at full volume, it is about 12 hours on basic cells and 15.5 on high-quality ones. One owner who bought the WR120B on Amazon says to keep it plugged in, because AA cells alone drain quickly.

Two days is a storm. A week is an outage. The Weather Service gives the reason for the backup in one line: “Since power outages often occur during storms, having a receiver with battery backup can be crucial.” The WR120B’s backup covers that night and the morning after. Midland packs the radio with an AC adapter and the owner’s manual but no AA cells, so buy three fresh alkaline cells with it and keep three spares in the kitchen drawer. Midland’s troubleshooting guide for the WR120 says to replace the backup cells once a year, to avoid leaks and keep them ready for an outage.

There is no hand crank, no solar panel and no AM/FM on this radio. You cannot wind it back to life on day four, and its WEATHER/SNOOZE button plays the Weather Service broadcast, not the local news station. Midland says it does not currently offer a portable radio with S.A.M.E. at all, and its own buying advice is that a radio for an evacuation needs more than one power source, such as a hand crank, solar or USB-C charging.

So the house gets two radios with two jobs. The WR120B stays by the bed, set to your county. A crank radio like the Midland ER310 runs on its own battery, six AA cells, a hand crank or a small solar panel, plays AM and FM, and goes with you to the shelter or the car. How the ER310 works is in our NOAA weather radio guide. One ER310 owner already lives this way, with a plugged-in Midland set to alerts and the ER310 in a bug-out bag in the tornado shelter. A commenter on r/weather, answering a question about radios for hurricane season, drew the same line: the WR120 can be set to your county, but it is built to stay put.

Where it sits, and what it hears

Midland pitches this radio for the bedside or for a central spot like the kitchen. Choose by who has to wake up. A radio on the kitchen counter is easy to hear at dinner; at 3 a.m. it has to reach the bedrooms through closed doors. Put it where people sleep, not where they eat.

Then check reception in that room. The Weather Service says reception can vary from room to room. For static from the power cord, Midland’s FAQ has three fixes: try another outlet, move the radio away from other electronics such as a router, or add a ferrite core noise suppressor. Midland gives the radio as about 6 by 5 by 2 inches, and the second video reviewer calls the antenna very large, so leave it some room on the nightstand.

For a heavy sleeper or someone who does not hear well, the second video reviewer points out the WR120B’s external alert jack, and the Weather Service says some radios have a jack for devices such as strobe lights or bed shakers. Check in the manual what the jack takes before buying anything to plug into it.

Straight from the threads

Who should pick something else

If you want one radio for the outage itself, the one you crank on day four and listen to for news, this is the wrong tool. Start with a crank radio like the ER310 in our guide, and add the WR120B only if you also want the county alarm by the bed.

If you move around, in an RV or between a house and a cabin, a move beyond your programmed counties means changing the county setting by hand and checking that the channel carries the new county. Midland’s ER portables, which tune to the local NOAA station wherever you are with no programming, fit a life on the road better.

Everyone else: set your county, put in the AA cells, and leave the radio next to the clock that blinks 12:00. That clock can stay wrong. The radio cannot.