Reason for delayed tornado warnings in Iowa

Wed Mar 23 20:16:33 UTC 2022

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

In a follow-up statement Monday, Buchanan said the communications delay 
resulted from a damaged fiber optic cable at the Weather Service’s 
Dallas-Fort Worth office.

“The cable outage caused that office to switch from its primary, 
land-based communication network to a backup satellite-based network that 
serves every NWS field office,” she wrote. “The uptick in messages flowing 
to the central message handler from NWS Central Region offices due to the 
severe weather, combined with the performance characteristics of the 
satellite network in use at a co-located site, slowed down the queue of 
message transmissions and created a brief backlog across multiple 
offices.”