Dear Editor,
Thanks for the great article on the NOAA outages.
NOAA/NWS still does not publish their alerts via IPAWS/CAP. Their spokesperson may be unaware that when these transmitters are off the air, there would never be an EAS alert on radio, television or cable systems in the areas, should there be a transmitter off-air during these upgrades coinciding with a storm.
It seems like a bad time of year to be doing this. The majority of actual EAS alerts that are aired come from NOAA Weather Radio. While NOAA/NWS published notices about these outages to other sources, the broadcast community should have been better warned.
It’s time for NOAA/NWS to complete the IPAWS/CAP link. The alerting and broadcast communities have been waiting on for decades. It would improve alert quality as well as redundancy when NOAA Weather Radio stations are off the air.
Until redundant alerts can be sent to EAS Participants via IPAWS/CAP, these NOAA Weather Radio outages should be postponed to periods where no significant weather is expected for several days.
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