Natural disasters and electricity cause disruptions in Guam, Venezuela, and Tanzania

Super Typhoon Sinlaku, the strongest storm of the 2026 Pacific typhoon season so far, tracked through the Mariana Islands in mid-April, passing just north of Guam. Though the island was spared a direct hit, the storm brought tropical-storm-force winds, knocking out power across Guam and disrupting water systems, which had a direct impact on Internet connectivity. Traffic from the territory fell as much as 80% below expected levels from April 13 to 14. Two months later, on June 24, two major earthquakes struck northern Venezuela within about a minute of each other, in Yumare and San Felipe, followed by an aftershock near the coast outside of Caracas. The first 7.

5 magnitude earthquake took place at roughly 22:04 UTC (18:04 local time). The immediate impact of these events can be seen in Radar, which shows a sharp decrease in both HTTP bytes transferred at the same time as the earthquakes. This decrease can be seen particularly well in Fibex Telecom, which, according to APNIC data, has 1. 6 million estimated users. The drop is also visible for CANTV, the state-owned incumbent, and VNET, a slightly smaller regional ISP.

Across the Atlantic just a few days later, a power outage in Tanzania on June 27 caused a sharp drop in HTTP traffic there that lasted for at least five hours. While distinct in cause from the country's election-related blackout in October 2025 (a deliberate government action rather than an infrastructure failure) the resulting telemetry and user impact were nearly identical: a drastic loss of connectivity that left residents unable to communicate with loved ones or access critical news. It is striking how such fundamentally different events leave such similar footprints in the data and user experience.