No Aircraft
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 14
Communication Breakdown; Workload
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Air Traffic Control Issued Advisory / Alert; Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance; Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic
Airspace Structure; Human Factors; Staffing; Weather
A line [of] weather started to build. Because of this; all aircraft traversing the airspace deviated north of a fix; then slowly turned back to the southwest. The volume of traffic was exceedingly high. The concentration of aircraft was such that it was all but impossible to keep data blocks from overlapping and obscuring one another; thereby making traffic searches very difficult. Due to the weather and bad rides frequency congestion was very bad. This extremely high volume of concentrated traffic affected [numerous] ARTCC sectors.The supervisor was well aware of what was going on. He asked Traffic Management Unit (TMU) to reroute traffic but was told there was nothing they could do. He had the Operations Manager come down to see the situation and get TMU to do something. The event lasted about an hour. In my almost 30 years controlling this is one of a the worst situations I have seen.TMU needs to more proactive and responsive to developing situations. They don't seem to take these lapses in their performance seriously. They are quick to come down and complain to our supervisors when we come up a couple miles short in a spacing situation; yet it seems; no one holds them accountable when these type of situations happen.
An ARTCC Controller worked a period of traffic of extreme complexity due to numerous weather deviations and too many aircraft routed through their airspace.