National Weather Service officials who coordinate volunteer storm-spotting have announced they are unable to receive all messages sent over Twitter “due to issues with Twitter rate limits.”
Weather service officials have directed storm spotters to email, phones, and other communication systems. Additional information is available at weather.gov/bou/spotters, officials said Tuesday night at 8:13 p.m. in a posting on Twitter.
Storm spotters attend training workshops and help weather service meteorologists monitor extreme weather, such as storms that produce tornadoes.
When spotters send large numbers of reports using Twitter — as they did Tuesday night — fees apply, weather service meteorologist Bernie Meier said Wednesday morning. “We can only read so many tweets. Then we are limited. Once we reach that limit, we are unable to see any tweets,” he said.
The challenges reflect changing conditions since Twitter owner Elon Musk bought Twitter last year for $44 billion. Musk has limited the number of tweets users can view in an effort to ease burdens on Twitter’s web infrastructure. New restrictions can lock out users if they view tweets above their limit. Weather meteorologists, based in Boulder, said in a subsequent Twitter posting at 8:16 p.m. Tuesday that, while they have “found some workarounds” to view some messages, “we are not able to efficiently sift through this during active severe weather events.”
The weather service’s automated watches and warnings still will be issued and sent out using Twitter as well as other delivery systems, officials said.
