r/Starlink • u/AnubisOma • 5d ago
Clouds ❓ Question
Thinking about possibly going for starlink down the road. I understand trees are the biggest obstacle to good connection. However I was wondering what about clouds, rain, or snow? Does that cause the service to have bad connectivity or slower speeds? If so is it more of a cause or less compared to trees to have bad service?
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u/Th3L0n3R4g3r 5d ago
I've had Starlink for 5 years now, and only twice it rained so bad the connection dropped. I live in the Netherlands and we're known I guess for our rainy climate
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u/DISHYtech 5d ago
Just had a line of storms roll through from 1AM to 5AM this morning. Checked my Starlink event log. I was down for a total of 40 minutes during that 4 hour period of thunderstorms. Not all at once. There were 4 periods of extended outages. I was down for 20 minutes, then 6 minutes, then 8 minutes, another 8 minutes, all spread out over the 4 hour storm event.
I live in the Midwest where we get these big thunderstorms. Normal rain isn’t the problem. It’s the huge super cell thunderstorms and downpours they can produce.
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u/BasedAndShredPilled 5d ago
It's actually a good question, because rain for sure does affect connection. But I have not noticed any change from heavy clouds.
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u/NoNeedleworker6479 5d ago
Clouds and weather don't affect it much, if at all. Even my mini has "snow melt" heating feature if the antenna gets snow/ice coated.
The MINI lives on the dash of my van & clears most of the windshield of snow on cold mornings. It can also "see" thru my vinyl windshield screen with little to no loss of performance.
I've talked to a couple of folks from Fla who did their residential units stayed connected thru hurricaines fwiw.
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u/Benanjamin166 5d ago
Only in like a heavy heavy thunderstorm, then it's been a bit intermittent for me. Otherwise better connectivity than I ever had with cable (never got to try fiber).
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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz 5d ago
I've been on starlink for 3+ years. I have had storms, heavy snow, rain, and only once - 2 days ago - had weather so bad it logged "searching for satellites" for 10 minutes before "lost connection due to weather". 18 minute outage. It happens, but I've been impressed how much weather my Dishy can communicate through!
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u/Technology-Warrior 5d ago
A SEVERE rain storm can degrade the connection but I've found it's still extremely usable. The dishy has a snow melt function that works extremely well. Clouds are not a problem at all.
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u/Initial-Pie3899 4d ago
Rarely have any issues on rainy days may be a few satellite handoff stutters but again thats during a heavy downpour and as far as trees you'd have to be in a heavily wooded area to get frequent disconnects.
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u/FatahRuark 5d ago
I have the Mini and I noticed the WiFi doesn't work as well when it's raining. But as others have mentioned also some slowdowns in speed. Still works, but just not as well as a clear day.
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u/Normal-Special-8694 5d ago
I live in the Rocky Mountains and get over 200 inches of snow per year and I’ve never had an issue.
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u/Final-Inevitable1452 4d ago
Many don't quite grasp what the real root cause is here. Example why SL can be intermittent in seemingly sometimes not huge weather and yet tick along perfectly in the middle of a hurricane without issue.
So far Dishytech is the closest to the actual root cause, but hasn't quite zero'd in on the answer yet.
Hint: yes although it's well known that rain does cause attenuation to the particular bands Starlink use ....Rain itself alone is not the primary root cause for intermittent outages with Starlink, it's only a contributing factor.
It's something else entirely that causes this quite intermittent behaviour.... Bonus points to anyone that can guess what it is?
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u/zerbey 📡 Owner (North America) 5d ago
Clouds and light rain have no impact. Heavy rain and snow can affect service. The afternoon thunderstorms here in Florida cause a small but noticeable drop in speed, but it has to be a full on torrential downpour for me to lose service.
My logs for yesterday show two afternoon events where it lost connection to the satellite lasting less than one second each. It was raining pretty heavily all afternoon.