Overview
- Hours after the FAA issued a rare nationwide ground stop on Friday, posts and isolated webpages began falsely claiming the National Weather Service radar network was down.
- The NWS posted that “there is no radar outage” and confirmed radar.weather.gov and its radars were fully operational.
- The agency said notices on its site about nationwide internet and communications problems can produce access issues or show outdated content, which likely helped spread the error.
- Local NWS offices, including Jacksonville, told reporters their systems were working and multiple news outlets relayed the agency’s correction to counter the misinformation.
- Federal officials are investigating the separate FAA communications failure that grounded flights, and the probe will determine what caused the air-traffic disruption and how soon normal operations will resume.