FARGO - North Dakota State University already uses modern technology, including e-mail and social networking sites, to notify people on campus about emergencies. When it comes to flooding, blizzards or tornados, school officials say nothing beats a tweet like a good old-fashioned weather radio.

The university is installing 400 weather radios - at least one in every dorm, office building and facility on campus. That includes one for the new $900,000 house soon to be occupied by NDSU President Joseph Chapman.

"Here's what we know about weather radios: They save lives," said Carol Cwiak, head of NDSU's emergency management program.

Cwiak, who refers to herself as "the emergency management chick," got a $412,352 grant from the federal Education Department for the radios, which cost about $30 each. She said the idea gained momentum after last spring's record-setting Red River flood that had officials debating whether to evacuate the city.

"We're rock stars now after the flood," Cwiak said, referring to the national attention given to the area for sandbagging efforts that saved most of the city.

The radios broadcast 24-hour weather forecasts and bulletins. The alerts can be set to a 90-decibel siren, flashing light or voice mode that goes off at the same time the National Weather Service issues a warning.

NDSU recently updated its emergency notification system to include cell-based telephone and text messaging, e-mail and such social networking sites as Facebook and Twitter. Officials say those systems are ideal for the workday but are not as effective at night when students are sleeping or studying.

"How many people have a radio and TV set that wakes them up during an emergency? How many people are going to hear anything when their cell phones are off?" asked Greg Gust, a Weather Service meteorologist in Grand Forks. "The weather radios are old-fashioned, but they are a reliable technology."

The radios can fit in one hand and are intrusive only when the alarm goes off, Cwiak said.

"The weather radio only goes off when there's an incident," she said. "So it sits there quiet, unobstructed and it doesn't bother anybody. It goes off only if there's for something for them to note. And believe me, you can't miss it."

About 98 percent of the U.S. population can access a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather radio, but the percentage of people who actually have them is less than 15 percent, said Rob Kupec, a meteorologist for Fargo TV station WDAY, who wrote about the issue in the monthly Journal of Emergency Management. Some states have considered requiring weather radios in new manufactured homes, he said.

"This area has more nighttime thunderstorms than any other area of the country," Kupec said. "And NDSU has probably the notoriety of being one of a handful of colleges that has been hit by a tornado."

A tornado later determined to be an F5 - the highest rating on the Fujita scale at the time - clipped the campus in 1957. Thirteen people were killed, although none was an NDSU student.

North Dakota's first weather radio tower was built in the mid-1970s, Gust said. In those days, he said, weather service officials would have to record the warning themselves on an 8-track tape. Now the messages are computer generated and feature three voices, two male and one female.

"Studies show that different people respond to different voices," Gust said. "We try to balance that out a little bit."

Cwiak joked that it was her lifelong goal to be the weather radio voice.

"I'm a weather radio geek, but I didn't expect everyone else to embrace it," she said. "They have. That makes me ecstatic."