National Weather Service Website Down

The National Weather Service official website was slow to respond Monday August 25, 2014 for most of the day. Services, such as the hourly forecast graphs, and text forecast discussions were inaccessible. Several internal links from forecast.weather.gov were inaccessible and produced an error page with the following messages ...

(1)

An error occurred while processing your request.

Reference #97.6fee32b8.1409001160.1d0386c2

(2)

An error occurred while processing your request.

Reference #97.6fee32b8.1409001298.1d03ea79

Access time average about 14 to 15 ms according to isitdownrightnow.com on August 25, 2014 at about 4:20 p.m. CDT.

Apparently a rogue or misconfigured app caused the interference with the National Weather Service website.  The National Weather Service did not release any information about the the specific app that was causing the problem or any other details.

A message on Monday, August 25, 2014 read ...

TO - ALL CUSTOMERS SUBJECT - POINT FORECAST ISSUES . WE ARE PROVIDING NOTICE TO ALL THAT NIDS HAS IDENTIFIED AN ABUSING ANDROID APP THAT IS IMPACTING FORECAST.WEATHER.GOV. WE HAVE FORCED ALL SITES TO ZONES WHILE WE WORK WITH THE DEVELOPER. AKAMAI IS BEING ENGAGED TO BLOCK THE APPLICATION. WE CONTINUE TO WORK ON THIS ISSUE AND APPRECIATE YOUR PATIENCE AS WE WORK TO RESOLVE THIS ISSUE. . NIDS - KM

Then Tuesday, August 26, 2014 a message read ...

Last Update: Tue Aug 26 19:05:01 2014 GMT
NWS TOC Operational Status Message

Tue Aug 26 02:42:58 2014 GMT

NOXX01 KWBC 260240
TO - ALL CUSTOMERS
SUBJECT - POINT FORECAST ISSUES
.
AKAMAI HAS INSTALLED FILTERS WHICH BLOCK
THE OFFENDING TRAFFIC.  NIDS HAS VERIFIED THAT
THE TRAFFIC IS BEING BLOCKED.  ALL SYSTEM ARE
NORMALIZED.  WE APPRECIATE YOUR PATIENCE.
PLEASE NOTIFY THE TOC AT TOC.NWSTG-AT-NOAA.GOV
IF ANY FURTHER ISSUES ARE IDENTIFIED.
THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
NIDS - KM

There were no messages regarding the problem on the official Twitter or official Facebook for the National Weather Service as of 4:20 pm. CDT.

The NWS has suffered a series of telecommunications problems during the past two years. In April, several important local NWS websites went down during spring's first major tornado outbreak. In May 2014, warnings were not broadcast via the website and via automated channels when an EF-3 tornado touched down near Albany, New York.

On some occasions, the National Weather Service has turned to Facebook and Twitter to make announcements when the website is not working properly.


See also ...
http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/weather.gov.html

http://weather.gov

forecast.weather.gov