Media attention to climate extremes is at an all time high. Their thirst, combined with federal, state and county agencies' need for authoritative climate information, can rapidly overwhelm existing climate center resources. Rapid distribution of millions of dollars in federal disaster aid hinge on accurate and timely analysis of the past and current climate records. Near real-time access to these records is generally unavailable to the agencies faced with disaster mitigation and strategic planning. To help meet this critical need, two national and six regional climate centers have unified to provide national climate information via the Internet. This paper focuses on how this "climate consortium" is solving the challenge of delivering timely and credible climate information nationwide to those tasked with mitigating the effects caused by a "climate of extremes."