NOAA's Dial-A-Buoy to hang up after 27 years on the line with boaters [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Arrrrrrrrrrrr.

NOAA’s Dial-A-Buoy to hang up after 27 years on the line with boaters

The phone service has offered potentially life-saving coastal weather and water information to both mariners and surfers

By Dan Stillman
March 12, 2024 at 12:19 p.m. EDT



A buoy from NOAA's Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System. (NOAA)

It’s the last call for Dial-A-Buoy, a longtime phone service that has provided hundreds of thousands of callers with potentially lifesaving coastal weather and water information.

The toll-free system, launched by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1997 as a resource for those away from a computer or the internet, will be retired as of Sunday “due to the low volume of users and the cost to retain the service,” the agency announced earlier this year.

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Dial-A-Buoy outlasted many local weather lines, Sports Phone and even Moviefone but knows its time has come. After dialing 888-701-8992 or 301-713-9620, callers are immediately greeted with a terse goodbye: “Please be aware this service will be discontinued after March 16th, 2024.”

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We’ve always known how to quit Dial-A-Buoy: Simply hang up. Soon, we’ll learn how it feels when Dial-A-Buoy quits on us.

By Dan Stillman
Dan Stillman is a meteorologist and editor for the Capital Weather Gang. He earned an M.S. in Meteorology from Texas A&M University, and a B.S. in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences from the University of Michigan. Twitter https://twitter.com/stillmand