NWS Gray System Upgrade April 22-24th Will Cause Limited Impacts to Some Services

National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices, River Forecast Centers, and Center Weather Service Units will be upgrading the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) from mid-April to late June. AWIPS is a Linux-based computer system used by the NWS to display and integrate weather and water information, and generate and disseminate life-saving weather and water warnings and forecasts to the nation. The current version of AWIPS will soon be obsolete, and  this upgrade needs to be completed as soon as possible to continue National Weather Service operations.  The AWIPS system at each office will be inoperable during the upgrade period, causing some interruption to non-core products and services.

The National Weather Service Forecast Office in Gray, Maine will be conducting their AWIPS upgrade from 8 AM April 22, 2025 through approximately 2 PM April 24, 2025.  During this time forecast operations will be conducted at our service back-up office in Caribou, minimizing interruptions to services.  No impacts to our core services of forecast products and weather watches, warnings and advisories are expected during this period.  However, limited impacts will occur to the following services: 

• NOAA Weather Transmitters - All NOAA Weather Radio transmitters maintained by NWS Gray will be off air through the time of the install.  This includes the following transmitters in Maine and New Hampshire: Pack Monadnock, Deerfield, Concord, Hanover, Holderness, Mt. Washington, Clarksville, Falmouth,  Dresden, Sugarloaf Mtn.  

• Total Water Level Forecasts - Coastal flood water level forecast services will be degraded due to a less frequent update cycle.  Forecasts will remain on https://water.noaa.gov/wfo/gyx through this period. 

• Local graphical forecast maps that are hosted in numerous places on www.weather.gov/gyx will not be updated.  This includes all maps on the Graphical Hazardous Weather Outlook page (https://www.weather.gov/erh/ghwo?wfo=gyx), the majority of the graphics on the Emergency Managers Self Brief (https://www.weather.gov/gyx/EMhome) and Winter Weather page (https://www.weather.gov/gyx/winter).  

The forecast office in Gray will remain open and staffed throughout this period for public phone calls and additional functions that can be completed without AWIPS.