Does Weather Affect Your WiFi Signal? Know the Truth
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Have you ever heard any of your peers asking whether WiFi signal gets affected by weather or not? It might also happen that this thought has popped up in your mind a hundred times till now.
In this of advanced modern technologies, WiFi has become an integral part of our daily life. And a poor signal from your router or nearest network is more than enough for you to lose your temper for the day, right? On top of that, you might have heard many heart breaking stories centering poor WiFi signals and weather.
So, let’s look into this issue – does weather affect WiFi signal? In this article, I’ll try to explain all the weather factors that are most likely to affect your WiFi signal. Eventually, you’ll also be able to understand whether these factors can affect WiFi signal in all situations or not.
Many business communities and localities have already conducted experiments in this regard. One example of such area is the community WiFi of Google at Palo Alto in San Francisco Bay. These experiments show that there are a number of weather conditions that weakens WiFi signal significantly.
But, you must know that weather can only affect WiFi signal in outdoor conditions. So, if you’re using WiFi from a router stationed inside your house, you need not to worry about weather conditions. Now, you might also ask how these weather conditions affect Wi-Fi signal. Don’t worry! I’ll tell you how.
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Indoor Wi-Fi
Nowadays, the most common use of WiFi is through wireless routers in houses or offices. As a result, such form of WiFi signals are not affected by adverse weather conditions. Weather can be a barrier as long as you’re trying to reach an outdoor WiFi signal like trying to reach the WiFi signal of the next door neighbor.
However, temperature and humidity are two weather conditions that might affect your indoor WiFi signal. You’ll get your answers when I discuss these two factors in the later part of the article.
Rain
Among the common weather conditions, rainfall affects WiFi signal the most. Do you know why? Because, the radio frequencies are absorbed and partially blocked by rain droplets. So, if you’re using a public WiFi signal that is light-pole-based, you’re most likely to experience interrupted signal in rainy days.
Let me explain a bit more. The rainfall interrupts WiFi signal almost as the same way it reduces our visibility. In other words, the WiFi signal is interrupted if it rains within the range of the router.
Temperature
As I’ve mentioned earlier, temperature is one of the weather conditions that affect both indoor and outdoor WiFi signals. Why? Because, temperature mostly affects the equipment rather than the WiFi signal.
Almost all electrical equipment are made to perform in a temperature range. If temperature falls below its range or rises above the range, the tool cannot perform well. So, whether outdoor or indoor, WiFi will work well in a given temperature range. If the temperature is too high or low, you’re likely to receive poor signal.
The indoor WiFi signal is comparatively less likely to be affected by temperature. In case of severe cold or hot weather, you can still warm up or cool down the down room temperature using heating machine or cooling machines.
Humidity
Humidity is yet another weather condition that can also affect your WiFi signal strength. What it does is it makes it harder for the router to transmit signal properly. In other words, the moisture present in the air interrupts the signal from your router. As a result, you’ll experience a slow internet connection.
As most WiFi routers are shot range equipment, your wireless connection won’t be affected drastically. On the other hand, extreme humidity condition would affect long range WiFi systems greatly.
Electrical Storm
You probably know that WiFi is basically an electromagnetic signal transmitted from a router. So, electrical storms are likely to affect WiFi signals in case of outdoor connections. And if you’re using your mobile phone as a remote device, you’re less likely to be affected in case of close proximity of your devices.
Conclusion
I know there are so many stories prevailing among common people about WiFi being affected by weather or not. If you ask any of your friends, they’ll probably tell what they’d heard from others. Although some of the stories are true, you’ll find most of them are scary and not true at all!
And now, you know the science how different weather conditions can affect your WiFi signal. In face of troubles regarding poor WiFi signal, I hope you’ll be able to determine whether your WiFi is affected by weather or not. If your WiFi is not affected by weather, you need to contact the manufacturer of your router.
