National Weather Service outage delays key weather forecasting tools amid severe weather
While severe weather threatened portions of the central and southeastern United States on Monday evening, June 25, 2018, a National Weather Service (NWS) data outage resulted in delays in key weather forecasting tools.
Some forecasting tools and critical weather data, which are vital to protecting lives and property during severe weather, were delayed by up to 2 hours as a result of the outage.
Severe storms rattle the southeastern U.S. on Monday, June 25, 2018, amid an NWS data outage. (AccuWeather radar image)
A partial shutdown of a supercomputer at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) was responsible for the outage, according to a statement by the NWS.
Shortly after 9:30 p.m. EDT, operations were restored after being shutdown for over an hour.
This outage came less than a month after a prolonged NWS outage. Prior to Alberto's landfall in Florida on Memorial Day, the lengthy outage in data from the NWS prevented meteorologists from using key weather forecasting tools from Sunday evening into Memorial Day.
"It is a very serious concern to see these continued data dissemination challenges, especially during times of severe weather when the speed of delivery and reliably of the data is so critical," AccuWeather Vice President and General Manager of Business Services Jonathan Porter said.
"AccuWeather and other companies in America's Weather Industry had expressed significant concern to the NWS when they switched to a new system for distributing data components in recent years, specifically raising concerns about how the new system would perform during major weather events when the requests for information would likely surge," he added.
Porter urges the NWS to develop and implement an action plan to resolve these ongoing data issues quickly.
During his Senate confirmation to head NOAA, Barry Myers, on Nov. 29, 2017, in response to a question from Senator Peters, addressed the issue of information transmission reliability. Prophetically, he stated there was concern about the new delivery system and that delays of even a few seconds during a tornado emergency could be critical.
Unlike commercial weather organizations that repackage NWS products, AccuWeather generates its own forecasts and warnings based on both public and proprietary weather data.
AccuWeather's unique technology aggregates and analyzes weather data through complex models and expert weather forecasters - the largest source of weather data and modeling available globally - to provide the most reliable weather information and updates with Superior Accuracy™.
AccuWeather uses best-in-class technology that is recognized by leaders around the world to ensure full reliability of weather data storage, accessibility and communications globally.
Barry Myers is the Chief Executive Officer of AccuWeather.
