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US National Weather Service Suffered 'Catastrophic' Outage; Website Stopped Sending Forecasts, Warnings (miamiherald.com)
jo7hs2 quotes a report from Miami Herald: On a day when a blizzard is pasting Maine and Northern California faces a dire flooding threat, several of the National Weather Service's primary systems for sending out alerts to the public have failed. As of approximately 1:15 p.m. Eastern Time, products from the National Weather Service ceased disseminating over the internet, including forecasts, warnings and current conditions. The Weather Service's public-facing website, Weather.gov, has not posted updated information since the outage began. Ryan Hickman, chief technology officer for Allison House, a weather data provider, called the situation "catastrophic." Hickman said two core routers for transmitting information from the Weather Service offices out to satellites, which beam the information back to public service providers, had stopped working. Hickman added that another backup system known as the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network (EMWIN) was also not operating.
Slashdot reader jo7hs2 notes: "The systems are back up as of Monday evening."
Slashdot reader jo7hs2 notes: "The systems are back up as of Monday evening."
Let me guess - the shooting incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School was filmed on the same soundstage where they faked the moon landings, right?
Can't have that kind of information just floating around where anybody can see it now, can we? I wouldn't be surprised if meteorologists at National Weather were instructed to have any information released to the public cleared by the White House first? It wouldn't do to have it known publicly what our weather is going to be tomorrow, would it?
Just... look out of the window
Please Google the 'Dunning-Krugar Effect' and note that there's at least 12 years of documented history and video evidence of the weak spot in the spillway.
There's real engineering here and there's people working today that weren't there 12 years ago that may well have not known about the issues documented prior.
There's no conspiracy here you nutter.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Don't most people consider weather forecasts "fake news" anyway?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hey, I'm sorry to hear your doctor was unable to find an effective dose for your meds. Now, put the keyboard down before your mother finds out what you're doing in her basement.
Where do you get your news, infowars.com?
Jesus can't come to the phone right now. He's kinda dead. Would you like me to give him a message for you?
You mean Trump is a plague visited upon America to punish it for its iniquities? Of course! It all makes sense now!
Where do you get your news, infowars.com?
Funny you say that. While infowars wasn't reporting on it(until yesterdayish), sites like breitbart and very small media outlets were reporting about the dam being highly stressed and having a high chance of failure. This 3 days(you can find local CBS and Fox news stations having multiple articles on it) before the big media outlets were, and it was one of the top stories on /r/conspiracy on the 10th and 11 and how the MSM wasn't reporting on it at all. That the dam was over capacity and the chances of it failing were increasing by the hour. Lot of people were also left wondering why the media and officials dealing with the dam were saying "don't worry, everything is fine" at 12pm yesterday then suddenly issuing emergency statements at 5pm on the same day and evacuation orders and people "really needed to leave now." That was when the dam was overflowing on the emergency spillway already, and the primary spillway already had a gaping hole in it and the lake level was going up by 2ft/hr.
That of course meant the highways were suddenly packed with people trying to get out of the evacuation zones. Instead of say starting voluntary evacuations on the 10th, and then staggered evacuations on the 11th. It's not out of the danger zone by any stretch right now. There's no way they're going to lower the water level by 50ft by today/tomorrow and depending on how the incoming storm tracks they could see another 2-4' water rise. The entire thing reeks of either political individuals leaning on the team overseeing the dam because they didn't want to create a panic. Or a level of incompetence so staggering that it wasn't until a bunch of engineers marched up and said: "If you don't order evacuations, we'll go to the press right now."
Om, nomnomnom...
The neat thing about telling people about the 'Dunning-Krugar Effect' is its self feedback. A "low ability" individual thinks that he is "high ability". He is then sent to the Wikipedia article where he reads that "high ability" individuals underestimate their competence. Since he thinks he is "high ability" he figures "Ah! I have been underestimating my competence. I am even more competent than I thought."
Lovely!
Is there any possible justification for withholding full details of the failure, in the public interest? If a bridge had collapsed instead, would it be possible to withhold details? Is it OK for this to just happen again at some random time?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
In the situation you describe I would expect the shit-posting to intensify.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Oh, it has, it has.
If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break
When the levee breaks I'll have no place to stay.
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moanâ¦
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Also, it's amazing how many "catastrophic" network events are over and gone before lots of people even noticed they happened.
I'm not sure that word means what they think it does.
Yeah, but monkeys made it to space first. And they got the hairless apes to do all the hard work.
This article is about Weather.GOV (which is a US NOAA/NWS product) not Weather.COM.
To be further clear, The Weather Channel has absolutely nothing to do with the National Weather Service other than they both provide weather forecasts. The Weather Channel wasn't even mentioned in any of the articles.
Trump must be a ... nut for speaking...
CNN is generally sensational clickbait, but it's not terribly biased. You'll find a lot of people here read something more reasonable than CNN/Fox News.
Putin did it?
Knowing how not to pay taxes legally is not a crime. We should celebrate it, because it is the proof that the IRS and Congress needs to re-write bit's of the tax code so that everyone pays the a proportion.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
It's about time they stopped disseminating over the Internet.
Ah, I missed that bit. Thanks.
Okay. Now THAT's funny!
The uncertainty is killing us. Since there's nobody with a reputation worth destroying left, us boys down in the basement are fearing for our jobs. Maybe we get some new positions in journalism, I heard they're looking for a few imaginative people to come up with news.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you're Jesus, you've probably already been shoved south of the border by now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, tell him there's still that unpaid bill for the dinner banquet he had a while ago with his buddies, and it's kinda hard to get a hold of him. Should I send it to the Vatikan? I heard his successor is sitting there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I see what you did there. Bravo, very subtle.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It almost does. There's the basis of a decent movie plot in there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At least we know that the new Trump guy arrived.
ðY
But, no, you said, it's safe you said.
Right.
Sure.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You're actually a bot from some .ru domain, aren't you?
The way he talks, he IS infowars. Seriously listen to the owner of infowars talk sometime. The man belongs in a straitjacket for his own protection.
Lot of people were also left wondering why the media and officials dealing with the dam were saying "don't worry, everything is fine" at 12pm yesterday then suddenly issuing emergency statements at 5pm on the same day and evacuation orders and people "really needed to leave now."
While not knowing the specifics I can provide some insight into how it typically works in engineering when there is a problem.
1. Someone raises the problem.
2. A meeting is stood up with a whole lot of heads in the room. Some will be new and recommend immediate evac. Some will have been there for 30 years and it wasn't as f'n bad as that event back in 80 and it survived just fine back then.
3. Engineers will do some actual engineering and will come up with an answer based on a large degree of uncertainty due to the age and unknown extent of any damage.
4. Everyone will eventually decide to chill, put round the clock monitoring on the situation and re-assure everyone it's undercontrol.
5. OMG A FUCKING CRACK! IT'S GONNA BREAK. SHUT IT DOWN. SHUT IT DOWN.
6. And evacuation right after we decided everything is fine.
I have seen this in roadways, dams, buildings, oil refineries, chemical plants, the story is always the same. With uncertainty comes ... well ... uncertainty. With panic there is certainty about something so we don't really want to insight panic. In the end a judgement call was the wrong one and everyone gets to evacuate, and with any luck the judgement then holds up in court as the right one given the available information at the time.
That's not to say this announcement couldn't have been entirely politically motivated, just that not all are and we engineers don't always have the 100% correct and certain answer.
"I look out the window and I see the weather. I don't need some agency to tell me what the weather is. Sad!"
It's "Dunning-Kruger", not "Dunning-Krugar". ;).
Thanks, it makes it easier to know which category you fall into
I apologize for implying that they're as dumb as they look.
Naah, don't bother. They still haven't repaid Europe for nearly seven centuries of systematic oppression and theft.
Once I was flying to southern California. Before my plane could take off, it had to sit at the originating airport for about an hour. There was a power failure in southern California, and because of the power outage, the airports there couldn't accept incoming planes. I don't know the details, but apparently not only some primary power equipment failed, but also both backup systems failed.
Regarding the weather website:
Hickman said two core routers for transmitting information from the Weather Service offices out to satellites, which beam the information back to public service providers, had stopped working. "There is a primary and a backup and both have failed," Hickman said.
. . .
Hickman added that another backup system known as the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network (EMWIN) was also not operating.
The article also states that they were doing "dissemination upgrades", and that in about a year, the system would be reliable, with "full backup capacity".
I hope during and after the upgrade, their attitude is not, "if we check off some boxes of to-do lists, then we've done our job". I hope their attitude is, "My job is to keep the systems up. If the systems go down, then I have failed." People's lives can depend on weather forecasts.