alt Hacker NewsAs a mild lifelong disaster "junky" (grew up in remote areas, dealt with cyclones, floods, droughts, fires, monsoons, coup d'etats, unannounced atomic tests etc during decades of global field work) this description:
As a web developer, I am thinking again about my experience with the mobile web on the day after the storm, and the following week.
I remember trying in vain to find out info about the storm damage and road closures—watching loaders spin and spin on blank pages until they timed out trying to load.
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.