‘Not true’: National Weather Service says tech issues regional, not widespread

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - The National Weather Service was not experiencing a nationwide outage on Friday despite rumors saying otherwise, officials said.

On Friday, Nov. 13, a member of WBTV’s local National Weather Service office confirmed that there was a regional issue with weather radios. The issue was not widespread, the official told WBTV on Friday evening.

According to the local office, old social media posts were being shared, indicating that there was a widespread weather radar outage or larger national outage in general. “Those rumors are not true,” an official said.

The National Weather Service itself posted on social media Friday evening, saying “there is no radar outage.”

“Outdated content from isolated webpages stating otherwise has been circulating, but NWS radars are operating normally,” the post read at 6:14 p.m. Friday.

A member of WBTV’s local weather office said that National Weather Service network engineers were troubleshooting the regional issue with weather radios.

The news came as the country grappled with a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, preventing thousands of flights from departing. At Charlotte Douglas International Airport, more than 580 flights were delayed as of 6:46 p.m., according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued the nationwide ground stop at around 4:11 p.m. on Friday due to a “temporary telecommunications outage.” It was not immediately clear what caused the issue, or how long it would impact air travel.

Federal officials don’t believe the FAA telecommunications issue was related to a cyberattack or terrorist attack of any kind. The ground stop was issued out of an “abundance of caution,” officials said.

---> Read more: Ground stop issued at all US airports including in Charlotte: What we know

It was not immediately clear whether the issue affecting air travel was at all related to the issue affecting the National Weather Service radios.

Friday’s ground stop came just hours after a major Microsoft Office outage impacted people and businesses around the globe. That outage was largely restored by Friday morning.

It was not immediately clear whether there was any connection between the Microsoft outage and the FAA telecommunications issue.

---> Read more: Microsoft explains what caused global outage, Outlook to go down for millions of users