If you’re used to checking your phone every morning to see what the weather is, that might change in the future due to bandwidth issues, according to the National Weather Service. In a recent statement, the NWS shared that as their data budget is hitting a ceiling, and demand for access continues to grow, they may have to consider throttling the amount of users who can access their essential forecast data.
According to their statement: “As demand for data continues to grow across NCEP websites, we are proposing to put new limits into place to safeguard our web services. The frequency of how often these websites are accessed by the public has created limitations and infrastructure constraints.”
For the past decade, the National Weather Service has been struggling to find the best and most efficient ways to disseminate critical forecast and warning information. According to an in-depth look at this problem by the Washington Post, the combination of increased data collection and demand for access from private companies and hobbyists has created a bottleneck that at times has crashed NWS websites.