The water.noaa.gov redesign (the last 2-3 years) is considerably less usable on mobile. The old site was old, sure, but they were too interested in making it look and feel new, that they didn't prioritize the basic functionality.
I'm sure the team is well-intentioned, but it should have been done more thoughtfully.
They focus on presenting a good amount of data in a pretty simple way.
Because of the nature of what they do there will always be a ton of data to present or display. At least in my opinion, NOAA does a great job here.
Their UIs have always been simple, easy to use, and reliable. Some data gets buried but that's the nature of it.