For the last few days the EPA sites are missing from NETC, and the problem seems to be their Radnet database. On the EPA website, their Cetral Data Exchange query tool returns data up to Nov 11 and not after. I tried to send a query to them but was not sucessful (I got a 403 authorization error, maybe because I am outside the USA).

Despite the error message, my query was sent. Radnet sent the following reply:

The data that is missing from RadNet comes from a number of issues.

The biggest issue is that this data does NOT come directly to you. It first goes to the NAREL main headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, which is located inside a military installation. Remember that this RadNet system has many owners, and the EPA is at the lowest level of that totem pole. Above them, whose orders they must go by, are the DOE, DOD, DOHS and no doubt a few others.

So first, the data goes there. A computer automatically scans it. Low values are typically discarded and the public never sees them. The system has two set points for the higher data. One is a lower temp hold, and the other is a higher no show. If the data doesn't climb up to the no show point, it is held until the readings drop below that temp hold set point...some times days or weeks later. If the data breaches the no show set point, it is never seen by the public.

Some of you might recall the 4-5 years after Fukushima happened, when you could not access very much data older than 2011, and nothing older than 2010. Then in 2016, they showed us data going back to 2006 in some locations. Why did they do that I wonder...

Lately we have seen data being held because of the wild fires in the west coast.