Does rain affect mobile network?

 The question is, do weather conditions such as rain, hail, or lightning storms affect your cell phone signal? Especially areas often happen natural weather phenomena such as South Africa, Peru, Costa Rica. Cell phone signal is carried by radio waves and cellular reception is able to be impacted by many atmospheric conditions. The terrestrial or broadcasting radio signal is also affected. 

How weather can affect the cell phone signal?

How weather can affect the cell phone signal?

In actual fact, the weather phenomena can influence the 4G cell phone signal in both direct and indirect ways, but it does not work with cell signals under 2 GHz. The reason is that these cell signals under 2Ghz are more robust and can travel further lengths, however, they are not used widely because they do not offer the fast speeds of frequencies above 2Ghz such as 4G or 5G. Instead, its plus is that they have the ability to be more penetrable and subject to obstruction. 

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• A direct effect: When a storm with lightning would lead to electrical interference with cell signals.

• An indirect effect:  A change of season, say from winter to spring has also an impact on cell reception. For example, on the arrival of spring, it is time for trees to bud out and produce leaves. As a result, the large foliage can disseminate, weaken and even block cell signals sending and receiving from the cell tower. Furthermore, this can adversely affect cell service for inside users who are using a cell phone. 

What are the reasons for these impacts on cell phone signals? 

Firstly, there should not any water in the atmosphere that positions between your cell phone and the cell tower. Water will prevent radio waves on the frequency bands that cellular networks are using. As consequence, weather conditions such as rain, fog, clouds, or a nice day with high humidity can lead to the degradation of cell phone signals.

Firstly, there should not any water in the atmosphere that positions between your cell phone and the cell tower

This signal impedance happens because water conducts electricity, which allows water vapor in the atmosphere to reflect or refract radio waves. Its terminology is “propagation delay effect.”

But for you and me it means the cell signal is weakened by noise or takes longer to get where it’s supposed to go (either to your phone or the tower) which we notice as lagging voice calls, buffering data, or dropped calls.

Various Weather Conditions Can Impact Your Cellular Signal:

Rain – As mentioned above, it is sure that data speeds and cell signals are affected by rain. Especially, rainstorms generally cause the biggest impact on cell reception because they contain a high density of water vapor. The heavier the rain, the higher the probability that your reception will be got an influence. 

Atmospheric water vapor (like rain) can also hinder your cell reception by absorbing energy from radio waves. The absorbed energy is converted into heat that the same thing your microwave does when you make a bag of popcorn or heat up food.

As mentioned above, it is sure that data speeds and cell signals are affected by rain

Lightning – Thunderstorms, not only the rain but also lightning associated with thunderstorms can cause electrical interference. Of course, a lightning strike can deface cell towers or other network equipment, make local cell service reduce.

Snow and hail – Do not have as big an impact as rain, snow and hail still have an effect on your cell reception because ice, in the form of snowflakes or hailstones, is less dense than water in liquid form. However, if the snow becomes particularly heavy, radio waves will be really refracted.

Fog & clouds – Again, these would probably affect cell phone signal less than rain, but they can still scatter radio waves in localized areas.

Temperature – If the temperature is just hot or cold, not along with other weather conditions, there will be no effect on your cell reception. However, it may seem like outside temperatures affect your signal because these temperatures change almost always to humidity changes that accompany warming or cooling temperatures.

Wind - Wind alone, like temperature, should not affect your cell reception. But any of the above-described weather conditions associated with high winds certainly can cause service issues. High winds can also damage cell network equipment and power lines, which could affect local cellular service.

Conclusion

How weather can affect the cell phone signal? The answer is yes and although we can change Mother nature, we can limit the impact of the weather phenomena in some ways. Read the article SLOW mobile data speed test? Let’s TRY 8 effective solutions! to apply some tips to improve the connection quality.