Transmission of tornado warnings delayed by major NWS tech issue

Sean Donelan sean at donelan.com
Mon Mar 7 01:47:56 UTC 2022



Weather Service tornado warnings were delayed during deadly Iowa outbreak

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/03/06/nws-tornado-warning-dissemination-iowa/

[...]
Susan Buchanan, the Weather Service’s director of public affairs, wrote 
that “a technical issue caused a delay of between 2-7 minutes for some 
transmissions,” noting that “system engineers quickly took action as soon 
as the problem was detected.” She emphasized that warning lead times 
averaged approximately 20 minutes during the outbreak.

“The National Weather Service is investigating this issued to determine 
the root cause and prevent it from happening in the future,” she wrote.

[...]
Weather radio was inaccessible in west-central Iowa as the transmitter 
tower in Denison, Iowa, suffered a “communications failure” Friday that 
knocked it “off the air.” There was no word of the transmitter being back 
online by Sunday.
[...]


Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Widgets now include severe weather alerts.
Google Search and Maps also include severe weather alerts.

Other streaming services do not have severe weather alerts.


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