Would they maintain their own private off-site backup or would they be in a cluster with other government agencies or renting out from a commercial operation?

nobody said they would. I’m just pointing out that the difficulty of backing up 45TB+ of computational meteorological data is a greater consideration than a bulk purchase of magnetic tape.

and, really, the carelessness with which you regard research and knowledge is pretty disgusting. don’t think you’re some hero for that. that’s hundreds of millions - possibly billions - of dollars of research and work let and hundreds of thousands of man-hours just gone. and, again, the data, the analysis, and the knowledge. just gone.