NOAA NCEI — 60+ PB across 4 US locations; data confirmed safe after Hurricane Helene 2024

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information manage over 60 petabytes of environmental data across four U.S. locations (S-0082).

When Hurricane Helene struck the centers' Asheville headquarters in September 2024, all archived data holdings were confirmed safe. The four-site distribution allowed the system to absorb a major weather event at one site without preservation impact.

The case is an illustration of Tier 2 working under physical-disaster pressure — and simultaneously of the limit C-0012 identifies. The four sites are physically independent, but all four report to the same agency. The FY2026 ~24% NOAA budget proposal (E-0017, S-0031) and the proposed Mauna Loa defunding (E-0018, S-0032) demonstrate that physical independence does not produce organizational independence: a single agency-budget decision can affect all four sites simultaneously, in a way that no hurricane can.

The case is therefore evidence both for Tier 2's success (Helene survival) and for its structural limits (single-agency budget exposure). The architectural fix C-0029 calls for is preservation that survives across both physical and organizational failure modes — which is what Tier 3 distribution adds on top of Tier 2's geographic distribution.