Update: Hurricane Helene’s impacts on NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, is recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Helene. NCEI has confirmed that all of its employees and staff are safe, and is continuing to support them through the storm recovery. NCEI data holdings — including its paper and film records — are safe. 

NCEI’s broadband internet provider is now fully operational. In addition to the recently reestablished connectivity, NCEI is leveraging facilities and staff in Colorado, Mississippi and Maryland to bring some system and data ingest capabilities back into operation. NCEI has resumed the majority of its data ingest streams and can confirm that data are being securely archived. We expect all ingest data pathways to be fully operational in the next two weeks.

NCEI continues to work with data providers to recoup data that were not ingested while systems were down. This work will take up to three months to be completed. NCEI will recover as much data as possible, however, some observations might eventually be unrecoverable. 

In parallel, NCEI is restarting and validating its processing systems that generate its value-added products and services that depend on these data. At this time, we do not have an estimate for when specific datasets, services or products will be fully operational on the NCEI website. We encourage users to check the NCEI website for products and services that have been restored. 

NCEI archives over 229 terabytes of data each month, maintaining one of the most significant archives in the world, with comprehensive oceanic, atmospheric and geophysical data dating back to the 1700s. NCEI also develops data-driven information products and services to support decision- and policy-makers and researchers across industry, government and academia.

NCEI and its staff are members of the Southern Appalachian communities that continue to recover from the event. NOAA continues to support federal relief efforts around the devastation of Hurricane Helene, and is committed to continuing support for impacted communities now and in the future.

Climate, weather, and water affect all life on our ocean planet. NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict our changing environment, from the deep sea to outer space, and to manage and conserve America’s coastal and marine resources.