An Air Carrier Dispatcher described a difficult day with weather and minimal dispatcher staffing complicating his responsibilities.

Narrative

Today was an extremely difficult day and at times impossible to maintain operational control. About an hour into my shift we had severe storms hit and brought about numerous aircraft holding simultaneously and ultimately diverting. The storms continued to backfill and trained across the area for two hours straight causing numerous phone and radio calls. Dealing with my flights alone and getting releases into the system correctly and legally was a very daunting task due to the sheer number of calls for myself and not to mention all the roll down calls from fellow dispatchers who were also overwhelmed. At times I was so focused on what was going on with the weather and the flights diverting that I cannot guarantee I didn't miss some weather amendments and ultimately flights possibly being dispatched illegally. This is completely unacceptable that I was unable to follow correctly and maintain operational control due to the extremely high workload. The weather here was just the beginning. Immediately following the first round of weather; we were thrown another problem. We lost multiple servers/systems and didn't have them for upwards of 90 minutes. Some of them are currently still out as of this morning. We lost the internet feed; which supplies our text and data radar along with flight view. So for 90 minutes plus we were unable to tell where our aircraft were enroute and what the weather was doing on radar as there were numerous severe storms all over the eastern half of the US. I had to put a weather hold on three of my flights due to I refused to allow them to takeoff without being able to see what weather is on their route of flight. Not being able to see where your aircraft is enroute and having someone come up to you asking about a flight and your response being 'I don't know' is a dangerous thing to have happen. There was just so much chaos today that for about a 4 hour period I really didn't have operational control of my flights due to the ridiculously high workload that was presented to me. I felt the need to write this report; as I am unaware if I made any mistakes today or not and to state that reducing staffing in this office will only lead to many more violations (some not even known) because of the already extremely high workload on each dispatcher. A reduction in dispatchers will be down right dangerous to the lives of our crews and passengers on each flight.