In a last-minute reprieve, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that they were able to save their contract with Amazon Web Services, keeping their websites alive on AWS’s cloud servers. The contract had been caught in widespread federal IT budget cuts, and had it not been for massive public outcry, NOAA’s research and online datasets – used for critical services like weather forecasting and storm tracking – would have become inaccessible to the public.