Network outage hits National Weather Service

The National Weather Service (NWS) is experiencing a vast network outage disrupting numerous operational functions as extreme weather continues to grip the country.

The “widespread network outage” began on Monday around 5:30 p.m. EDT and continued into Tuesday, a spokesperson from the NWS said in a statement.

The outage has hampered the agency’s ability to operate as usual by causing the “degradation of forecast and warning dissemination, disruption of data flows, and sluggish websites,” the spokesperson said.

“NWS systems engineers worked overnight to restore some functionality – including the flow of weather forecasts and warnings,” the spokesperson said. “And progress continues to be made today.”

An initial investigation into the cause of the outage revealed a network hardware configuration issue, the spokesperson added.

The disruption in NWS’s operations coincides with ongoing extreme weather, including a record-breaking heat wave that hit the mid-Atlantic region last week and this past weekend. That extreme heat will now make its way to the South and southern Plains, with temperatures expected in the triple-digits.

Dangerous flooding hit numerous states this weekend, and President Biden even approved a major disaster declaration for Iowa due to the heavy rain and flooding. A dam in Minnesota was declared by its county emergency management officials as being in “imminent failure condition” after the weekend’s flooding.