the power outages over the last few days appears to have fried the main server which handles bulletins and alerts. the machine wasn't totally fubar, but the motherboard was screwed up enough to not keep accurate time.
it sounds like a small issue, but the alerts and bulletins were sorted by newest first... and since the time on the machine was fluctuating by 30 minutes or so every few seconds, it was causing things to fuck up.
i've put a hack in which should get everything working again.. we'll hopefully be replacing that computer in the next few weeks.
-mike