National Weather Service Budget Funds Critical Upgrades and Moves Key Weather System to the Cloud

April, May, and June are the most active months for tornadoes in the United States. The availability and reliability of the National Weather Service (NWS) forecasting and warning systems are critical to the nation’s safety.

The NWS FY 2025 $1.4B budget includes a $22.5M increase for Integrated Dissemination Program (IDP) Implementation and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) migration to the Cloud. These investments will ensure continued system reliability and avoid outages like the one last week.

The IDP infrastructure is the NWS telecommunications hub consisting of on-site cloud systems in College Park, MD, and Boulder Colorado that collect and distribute watches, warnings, advisories, data, and weather-related products to the various dissemination networks. The AWIPS is a 30-year-old interactive network of information-processing systems that integrates the data with satellite and radar images. This outdated AWIPS architecture struggles to keep up with the increasing amount of data available creating a need for alternative telecommunications systems and impacting its ability to incorporate technological advances and innovations, the budget requests said. It also limits the forecasters’ access to remote Impact-based Support Systems (IDSS) at partner locations.

On April 2, during an outbreak of dangerous thunderstorms, an intermittent IDP circuit failure at the College Park data center should have triggered an automatic switch to a backup system. Because the failure was intermittent, the switch did not occur, rendering the telecommunications systems inaccessible. This prevented forecasters from accessing critical radar data and interfered with the distribution of weather watches and warnings until the cause was determined and operations manually switched to the Boulder center.

The IDP Implementation and transitioning the AWIPS to a cloud framework will mitigate future issues such as this. Therefore, the NWS requested a $11.4M increase for the IDP implementation and an additional $11M for AWIPS in the Cloud migration. Although these investments may seem insignificant compared to the overall budget, the impact on the nation’s population and infrastructure is considerable.

“The ability to communicate warnings and forecasts to the American public is essential to protecting property and saving lives,” the agency said.

The agency explained that the U.S. had experienced an average of $20B in weather and climate disasters over the last three years. As the number of these events increases, system reliability, speed, and data accuracy from an IDSS are critical.

 “Without additional resources to support the IDP, periodic enhancements and upgrades, as well as hardware refresh, the health of the applications and system will quickly deteriorate and compromise the ability of the NWS to fulfill its mission,” the agency said. “NWS must ensure access to technology and tools that enable NWS personnel to provide weather, water, and climate services to decision makers anytime, anywhere. NWS also must maintain a strong dissemination infrastructure so it can communicate essential warnings and forecasts to the American public.”

IDP implementation and transforming the AWIPS to a cloud-based system with cyber security enhancements will address those issues. The proposed budget funds the following efforts:

• IDP Implementation ($129.6M) maintains recent investments and fully funds IDP hardware upgrades, software maintenance and returns 24/7 support for all hardware and applications.
• AWIP in the Cloud - Observations/Data Flows ($4.5K) includes developing a concept of operations, planning, and demonstrating updated data flows from radar, marine, upper air and surface observing platforms, migrating connections and data flows to new circuits, and integrating and testing observations into the AWIPS in the Cloud capability.
• AWIP in the Cloud - Central Processing/Networking (NWS-26) ($1.5K) provides increased satellite network bandwidth, processing, and storage capacity critical for forecasting severe weather and man-made and terrorist disasters.
• AWIP in the Cloud - Dissemination/Systems Engineering and Architecture ($5K) promotes increased accessibility, interoperability, and stewardship of NOAA data, leading, delivering, and coordinating NWS contribution to NOAA, DOC, and Administration data dissemination initiatives.

“FY 2025 investments are focused on enhancing the protection of life and property by empowering our people, improving our infrastructure, and looking towards the future,” the request stated. Ongoing efforts include an architectural analysis to determine design needs for data access, cybersecurity, and integration with existing infrastructure; market research and government cost estimates to award contracts for operations and sustainment of the AWIP in the Cloud; and training programs for users and maintainers of the migrated system.

These are consistent with the NWS 2023 - 2033 Strategic Plan for a full-scale AWIPS cloud configuration by 2029. 

IDP & AWIP FY 2026 – FY 2029 Milestones

Contractor Implications

As the government works toward complete migration, expect opportunities across multiple industry verticals. Hardware and software procurements will be necessary to replace outdated infrastructure and address cyber security and artificial intelligence/machine learning impacts. Administrative and professional services will include curriculum design/delivery, data management and analytics, and storage requirements.

The incumbent AWIPS contract held by Raytheon Technologies does include much of this work. However, the contract has more than three years before expiration and already includes 75 subcontract awards. Vendors should expect additional subcontracting opportunities related to the proposed upgrades and migration efforts. Additionally, interested contractors should watch for Requests for Information and other market research notices as contract expiration nears and as new work evolves. Although the budget does not project significant increases over the next four years, by nature of the services provided, the work remains vital to the nation and future contracting opportunities will exist.