Power outage in Boulder Colorado affects NIST time service
Widely reported, but not yet on Outages: https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/internet-time-service/c/o0dDDcr1... jeff.sherman@nist.gov 2:18 AM (17 hours ago) to Internet-time-service Dear colleagues, In short, the atomic ensemble time scale at our Boulder campus has failed due to a prolonged utility power outage. One impact is that the Boulder Internet Time Services no longer have an accurate time reference. At time of writing the Boulder servers are still available due a standby power generator, but I will attempt to disable them to avoid disseminating incorrect time. The affected servers are: time-a-b.nist.gov time-b-b.nist.gov time-c-b.nist.gov time-d-b.nist.gov time-e-b.nist.gov ntp-b.nist.gov (authenticated NTP) No time to repair estimate is available until we regain staff access and power. Efforts are currently focused on obtaining an alternate source of power so the hydrogen maser clocks survive beyond their battery backups. More details follow. Due to prolonged high wind gusts there have been a combination of utility power line damage and preemptive utility shutdowns (in the interest of wildfire prevention) in the Boulder, CO area. NIST's campus lost utility power Wednesday (Dec. 17 2025) around 22:23 UTC. At time of writing utility power is still off to the campus. Facility operators anticipated needing to shutdown the heat-exchange infrastructure providing air cooling to many parts of the building, including some internal networking closets. As a result, many of these too were preemptively shutdown with the result that our group lacks much of the monitoring and control capabilities we ordinarily have. Also, the site has been closed to all but emergency personnel Thursday and Friday, and at time of writing remains closed. At initial power loss, there was no immediate impact to the NIST atomic time scale or distribution services because the projects are afforded standby power generators. However, we now have strong evidence one of the crucial generators has failed. In the downstream path is the primary signal distribution chain, including to the Boulder Internet Time Service. Another campus building houses additional clocks backed up by a different power generator; if these survive it will allow us to re-align the primary time scale when site stability returns without making use of external clocks or reference signals. Best wishes, -Jeff Sherman
Yo All! No time for the winter wind, No time for when the power went. DST has changed and so I, Need not wonder whyyyyyy. You need not wonder whyyyyy. No time left for youuuu. No time left for youuuu-ohhhh-ooohhhhhhhhhhhh NO TIME. NO TIME. NO TIME. NO TIME. I GOT GOT GOT GOT NO TIME... -- Jeremey Sands, w/ apologies to The Guess Who RGDS GARY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703 gem@rellim.com Tel:+1 541 382 8588 Veritas liberabit vos. -- Quid est veritas? "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." - Lord Kelvin
Lol PMEL guy here. -bruce ________________________________ From: Gary E. Miller via Outages <outages@outages.org> Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2025 6:57:32 PM To: Bill Woodcock via Outages <outages@outages.org> Cc: Gary E. Miller <gem@rellim.com> Subject: [Outages] Re: Power outage in Boulder Colorado affects NIST time service Yo All! No time for the winter wind, No time for when the power went. DST has changed and so I, Need not wonder whyyyyyy. You need not wonder whyyyyy. No time left for youuuu. No time left for youuuu-ohhhh-ooohhhhhhhhhhhh NO TIME. NO TIME. NO TIME. NO TIME. I GOT GOT GOT GOT NO TIME... -- Jeremey Sands, w/ apologies to The Guess Who RGDS GARY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703 gem@rellim.com Tel:+1 541 382 8588 Veritas liberabit vos. -- Quid est veritas? "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." - Lord Kelvin
Fortunately I haven't gotten any on call outages yet for the DSRC building. N-Wave guy On Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 19:03 Gary E. Miller via Outages <outages@outages.org> wrote:
Yo All!
No time for the winter wind, No time for when the power went. DST has changed and so I, Need not wonder whyyyyyy. You need not wonder whyyyyy. No time left for youuuu. No time left for youuuu-ohhhh-ooohhhhhhhhhhhh NO TIME. NO TIME. NO TIME. NO TIME. I GOT GOT GOT GOT NO TIME...
-- Jeremey Sands, w/ apologies to The Guess Who
RGDS GARY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703 gem@rellim.com Tel:+1 541 382 8588
Veritas liberabit vos. -- Quid est veritas? "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." - Lord Kelvin ______________________________________________ Outages mailing list outages@outages.org Sign up for an account https://lists.outages.org/accounts/signup/ To subscribe send an email to outages-join@outages.org To unsubscribe send an email to outages-leave@outages.org To contact the list owners outages-owner@outages.org Archives https://lists.outages.org/archives/list/outages@outages.org/
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participants (4)
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Bill Woodcock -
Bruce Freshwater -
Gary E. Miller -
Robert Webb