High Plains Regional Climate Center reopens after 36-hour shutdown

The High Plains Regional Climate Center has resumed operations after going dark for 36 hours last week due to a funding delay.

“We thought it was going to be a lot longer than what actually happened, but we got word at about two o'clock on Friday afternoon,” said Gannon Rush, a climatologist with the HPRCC.

The HPRCC, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, offers weather and climate condition monitoring, services and data collection for Nebraska and five other states in the region. It works out of an office on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus.

While the website was down, HPRCC had a form users could fill out and indicate what services they found most important. Rush said over 50 people filled out the form indicating the tools and data the HPRCC offered were important to their work. He has not yet been able to analyze the forms and see from what sectors they are from.

“I'm glad it was as short as it was, because I think a lot of people would start feeling the effect as we kept going and going and going, if we'd been down,” Rush said.

HPRCC went dark for a day and a half due to its contract with NOAA lapsing. According to reports from both NPR and ProPublica, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is reviewing all contracts over $100,000, leading to delays in contract renewals.

“We have five-year contracts that are basically renewed annually,” said Rush. “What this contract allows us to do is just do our basic functions, like we have requirements from NOAA that we need to take care of, and then...it gives us kind of the flexibility to reach out to people, travel to conferences, present, kind of gather ideas.”

This year is the end of this most recent five-year contract, according to Rush. He said they will get a new five-year grant proposal from NOAA this summer, they will negotiate, then go through an approval process at the beginning of 2026.

Rush said he is hopeful and has a feeling that next time around it will not be nearly as stressful.