Flood Knocks U.S. Buoy Data Offline
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By Mike Schuler.
A flood at the U.S. National Weather Service’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland has knocked out power to servers processing NOAA’s marine buoy data, rendering the data inaccessible to the public.
A timeline for when the data will be restored has not yet been determined.
The NOAA National Data Buoy Center’s mission is to provide quality observations in the marine environment in a safe and sustainable manner to support the understanding of and predictions to changes in weather, climate, oceans and coast, according to the NDBC website.
The NDBC operates a network of offshore automated weather buoys and Coastal-Marine Automated Network stations that provide hourly reports of marine weather to the National Weather Service and other agencies, providing critical information including wind speed and direction, wave height, pressure changes, and other key data about marine conditions and developing storms along the U.S. coast, Great Lakes, and out at sea. The information is also critical to commercial and recreational mariners.
A statement posted to the NDBC website said the agency’s primary processing servers were shut off due to a facilities issue on March 9.
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