All that snow? It's effect on local TV?

[KML0224]

I'm here in a mostly-snowless central Connecticut watching The Weather Channel talking about the I-81 corridor between Syracuse and Watertown. With that much snow all at once, does it affect the transmission of the TV signals itself, such as channel 7 from Carthage/Watertown and 50 from Watertown? (In terms of the access to the transmitters being impassible, etc.). I saw 2 feet on the ground here once, but NEVER 7 feet. WOW!

 

[AMonFM]

It might cause a tiny bit of signal loss on weaker UHF channels, but not too much effect down in VHF. Thing to remember is the bands of really heavy snow aren't that wide, that is to say the signals don't have to travel very far through them and really heavy snow squalls (rates of 4+" per hour) are localized, isolated, and always on the move. In normal lake effect snow, it's pretty common to be in blizzard conditions in one spot and literally have clear sunny skies just a few miles down the road. I think any snow sitting on the antenna itself probably does more to lessen signal strength than anything.

On a related note: Channel 9 was doing live shots in white-out conditions and their microwave signal had no trouble at all cutting through the heavy snow. Actually, it's kinda surreal as usually when you see live shots in other types of bad weather (hurricanes, thunderstorms, etc.) where the picture is grainy or breaks up. But in L.E. snow, you usually get an almost perfect steady picture from the truck (and northern Oswego County is a bit of a haul to the tx sites SE of SYR). One thing that is typically noted is that any trop from the north side of the lake does get squelched when there's very heavy snow bands over the lake. Another thing we notice is that heavy snow will rarely break up the signal on the dish, since the clouds that come off the lake aren't very high, again the signal doesn't have to travel through too much. Heavy rain actually does more to reduce signal strength than snow. Snow causing a snowy picture sorry.. .couldn't resist!

As far as transmitter access goes, most all of the TV stations in both Watertown and Syracuse aren't in the areas that saw 11 feet of snow, so not a huge problem there. Also, the sites aren't that far off the road, so plowing them out usually isn't a big issue either. Folks in CNY are pretty used to this and as my parents (New Haven, Oswego Co.) noted, not a long face to be found anywhere. People just deal with it and move on (albeit a little slower from shoveling/plowing/moving so much snow the past week )

 

[BobRoss]

The other effect of all this snow: GREAT February Nielsen for any station that does local news. This is the kind of weather where WWTI will wish they still had a full news operation while they sit back and watch WWNY clean house. With today's widespread snow, the same could be said of WUTR and WKTV in Utica. When there's this much snow, people want to see what's open, what's closed, and how much more snow there's gonna be... not Inside Edition or Dr. Phil.

 

[KML0224]

Yes, but the closing announcements get tiresome with the cabin fever and all. It's a mix of snow and sleet for me here in central Connecticut as I type this.

 

[jfc40ts]

AMonFM wrote,

Another thing we notice is that heavy snow will rarely break up the signal on the dish, since the clouds that come off the lake aren't very high, again the signal doesn't have to travel through too much. Heavy rain actually does more to reduce signal strength than snow. Snow causing a snowy picture sorry.. .couldn't resist!

It should be noted here that the snow we get from the "lake effect" storms is rather light and fluffy in consistancy. The problems encountered by dish owners is wet snow which is quite dense and prone to freezing. Either way, this type of snow will accumulate at the bottom of the dish and will "change the contour" causing a lot of the reflected signal to bypass the feed horn. Until the problem is taken care of, the dish will appear to be be misaligned...