658
NOUS41 KWBC 291930
PNSWSH

Service Change Notice 24-44
National Weather Service Headquarters Silver Spring MD
330 PM EDT Mon Apr 29 2024

To: Subscribers:
 -NOAA Weather Wire Service
 -Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
 -NOAAPort
 Other NWS Partners, Users and Employees

From: Ben Kyger
 Director, NCEP Central Operations

Subject: Migrate NWS weather.gov Website to New Infrastructure
 and Decommission Websites/URLs, Effective June 4, 2024

On or about June 4, 2024, at 1430 UTC, the National Centers for
Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations (NCO) will migrate
the
National Weather Services (NWS) Website, https://weather.gov/,
including
all Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs), River Forecast Centers (RFCs),
Center
Weather Service Units (CWSUs), and National Program Web Pages, to new
infrastructure and decommission legacy URLs. In the event of a
Critical
Weather Day (CWD) or an Enhanced Caution Event (ECE), any changes
will
proceed within 5 business days after expiration. Users can find
CWD/ECE
status at the link below and should monitor the weather.gov website
headline for updated notifications.
 https://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/status/cwd/

1) Changes to the Website
The migration to new infrastructure will result in minor changes to
user
experience and functionality, with the overall intent to limit the
changes
to only those required by upgraded hardware/software.

Some software code is not backward compatible and as a result, some
office
web pages may experience:
 - Broken links
 - Special characters appearing as ?
 - Non-functioning features like graphics, emojis, loops, or icons
 - Text formatting display issues
 - Navigation arrows not properly displayed

The website consists of over 13,000 web pages, the NWS will continue
efforts to resolve the issues identified. For more details on these
issues
see:
   https://weather.gov/idp/wxgovmigration

2) Decommissioning
A) The URL https://w1.weather.gov will be decommissioned.
 - https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/SITE.html will become
https://forecast.weather.gov/data/obhistory/SITE.html where SITE is
different observation stations.
 - The NWS Glossary will be moved from:
https://w1.weather.gov/glossary to
https://forecast.weather.gov/glossary.php
 - The XML Observation Webpage will be moved from:
https://w1.weather.gov/xml/current_obs to
https://forecast.weather.gov/xml/current_obs
Unless otherwise specified above, users should update any bookmarks
to
point to:
   https://weather.gov

B) Automatic redirects of legacy web pages
 - See the link below for a list of all automatic redirects that are
being removed and will no longer work. Users should update all
bookmarks
to the new website URL.
 - An example of this would be:
https://www.nws.noaa.gov will no longer redirect to
https://weather.gov
See below for a full list of redirects:
https://weather.gov/idp/wxgovmigration

For problems or operational issues with the Website, please contact:
 NCEP Central Operations
 Tech Control
 nco.ops@noaa.gov

For questions about the details of the migration in this notice,
please
contact:
 NCEP Central Operations
 Implementation and Data Services Branch, Onboarding Team
 idp-feedback@noaa.gov
or
 nws.webfeedback@noaa.gov

National Service Change Notices are online at:

https://www.weather.gov/notification/