Unfortunately the results are not pretty: there has been a serious decline in availability of hourly weather data in recent years. The number of sites reporting consistently on an hourly basis has dropped by about 40% in the last decade, and only 19 reliable FAA/NWS sites remain in off-road-network locations. Check out the linked article for some striking graphics.
It's not difficult to observe the trend in the data. Here's a chart for Utqiaġvik showing the percentage of days each year with temperature and wind data from at least 18 of 24 hours (not necessarily at the top of the hour):
Last year the observation reliability fell of a cliff, with virtually the entire summer missing data in the overnight period. This year the same thing happened in March and April, but not in summer.
From a scientific standpoint it's a shame to see the lack of commitment to maintaining weather and climate monitoring with the FAA/NWS instrumentation, and from a public service standpoint it's bad news, as reliable real-time ground-level weather data is important for forecasting and decision making.
A significant counterpoint, however, is that NOAA's Climate Reference Network has expanded its coverage across Alaska in the last 20 years. There are now 25 sites installed, and while several aren't reporting currently, the overall volume of data has become substantial in recent years. The chart below shows the annual number of daily observations with maximum and minimum temperature across all the sites:
With the CRN sites being located preferentially in stable and often remote locations, and with high-quality instrumentation, the scientific value for long-term climate monitoring is potentially much higher than with airport instruments; but for real-time weather monitoring and forecasting, the CRN network can't replace the loss of FAA/NWS data in recent years.
