NWS Faces Major Network Outage Amid Severe Weather Conditions

The National Weather Service (NWS) is grappling with a widespread network outage that began on Monday at 5:30 p.m. EDT and continued into Tuesday. This outage has significantly disrupted the agency’s operations, including the dissemination of forecasts and warnings, data flows, and website performance. According to a spokesperson, NWS systems engineers have been working to restore functionality, achieving some progress overnight. The outage is attributed to a network hardware configuration issue. This disruption comes amid extreme weather conditions, including a record-breaking heat wave moving towards the South and southern Plains, and severe flooding across multiple states. President Biden has declared a major disaster in Iowa due to heavy rain and flooding, and a dam in Minnesota is at risk of imminent failure.