[EAS] WP: Weather SErvice tornado warnings were delayed during deadly Iowa outbreak

[Sean Donelan]

The article doesn't mention the management of a commercial weather company 
has been lobbying to cut NWS's public dissemination budget for years.  It 
claims that NWS shouldn't "compete" with commercial companies selling 
weather data.

Due to dissemination problems, some warnings didn't reach the public until 
seven minutes after they were issued

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/03/06/nws-tornado-warning-dissemination-iowa/

"The local offices were issuing the products in a timely fashion, but a 
dissemination delay affecting all [Weather Services] offices nationwide 
caused the products to be transmitted a number of minutes later," Daryl 
Herzmann, a systems analyst with Iowa State University, said in an email. 
He created a popular site used by meteorologists that archives National 
Weather Service advisories, watches and warnings.

Susan Buchanan, the Weather Service's director of public affairs, wrote 
that "a technical issue caused a delay of between 2-7 minutes for some 
transmissions," noting that "system engineers quickly took action as soon 
as the problem was detected." She emphasized that warning lead times 
averaged approximately 20 minutes during the outbreak.

[...]
Weather radio was inaccessible in west-central Iowa as the transmitter 
tower in Denison, Iowa, suffered a "communications failure" Friday that 
knocked it "off the air." There was no word of the transmitter being back 
online by Sunday.