Weather Service: Please Disregard Our Giant Biblical Flood Warning

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The false flood warnings were issued shortly after a major flooding event occurred in the Southeast. In this April 7, 2014 photo, an abandoned vehicle sits submerged by floodwaters on a road in a mobile home park in Pelham, Ala.

Image: Jay Reeves/Associated Press

By Andrew Freedman2014-04-10 18:10:28 UTC

NOAA, meet Noah.

The website for the National Weather Service (NWS), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), suffered a major malfunction on Thursday leading to the false appearance of a biblical flood warning spanning from Canada (which the NWS doesn't even have responsibility over) south to Florida, and west to Michigan.

The malfunction, which began around midday ET, affected local NWS websites — key conduits for disseminating life-saving watches and warnings.

Screenshot taken at 1:45 pm ET on April 10, showing the huge, false, flood warning in green.

The false alarm led to one tweet from the National Weather Service forecast office in Boston, which may prove to be one of the greatest dispatches in the history of the NWS.

In Boston, as well as New York City, the NWS websites showed a major flood warning in effect, yet skies were clear and conditions were so dry that a brush fire was burning in Edison, N.J., southwest of the city.

The situation was even more confusing in the Southeast, which experienced widespread flooding over the weekend. River flood warnings were still in effect in Alabama and other states, but it was difficult to pick those out from the maps on the NWS websites — since they were covered in the green hue of NOAA's mysterious flood.

The latest website issue comes a week after NWS websites experienced server problems as a tornado outbreak got underway in the Mississippi River Valley. Those problems prevented some users from accessing NWS websites.

Mashable has reached out to NOAA public affairs to find out more about the website issues, and is waiting to hear back. We'll update this story when we do.

Topics: Climate, flood warning, national weather service, NOAA, U.S., US & World, website malfunction