Twitter’s data center knocked out by extreme heat in California
For several hours on Wednesday night, temperatures at Twitter’s data center in Northern California broke the century-old record for a sustained period of extremely high temperatures. Twitter confirmed that the data center suffered from “extreme heat conditions” and will be out of commission as a result, though an exact time frame has not yet been determined. The company was alerted to the issue just after midnight when temperatures in the facility surpassed 105 degrees, with winds gusting at 50 miles per hour. The National Weather Service issued a fire weather warning for the area, which includes Silicon Valley and the Peninsula, as a result. “We were made aware of a potentially dangerous issue late last night in Northern California,” the company’s chief technology officer of data centers, Mike Minnich, told reporters on a call after they had arrived at the facility. “We are looking into it and working to get it resolved as quickly as possible.” In addition to Twitter, the outage was felt around California’s San Francisco area, and some area businesses, such as a Tesla Inc. auto store, shut down operations. But the San Francisco Bay Area, which accounts for about 75 percent of California’s economy, appeared to be unharmed by the heat.
‘What’s the news?’: US Air force’s heat wave overshadows global story
The day started like many others, with heavy rain and high temperatures in southern and central California. About two hours later in central and northwestern parts of California, temperatures surged to about 100 degrees. A few hours after that, the day turned warm and windy again, with a temperature of 103 degrees in Sacramento, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures in the San Francisco Bay Area remained above 100 degrees, with a high of 103 degrees recorded in Orinda, according to the weather service. Around midnight, the temperature reached 105 degrees at Twitter’s facility. Twitter said in a statement that “unusual high heat levels” had forced the company’s engineers to shut down their data center because “this is no average California summer day.”
High temperatures at Twitter