High Plains Regional Climate Center has gone dark

The High Plains Regional Climate Center’s website went offline Thursday morning after its funding lapsed at midnight.

Gannon Rush, a climatologist with the center, said the current funding is “still needing governmental approval.”

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.

Within the state, the center operates the Automated Weather Data Network, which farmers can use to decide whether crops need to be irrigated. HPRCC’s Growing Degree Day Tools offer data that is often used by farmers to know what actions they should take based on where in the growing process their crops are.

“Particularly in the spring and summer, if either of these products are down, I hear about it pretty quickly,” Rush said in an email.

HPRCC’s climate data is used by multiple agencies when it comes to monitoring drought conditions.