Does cloud cover affect my WildBlue service?
Clouds consist primarily of water vapor. Water vapor is a gas, not a liquid, and has only a minimal impact on our signals. When water vapor turns to liquid water, gravity pulls on it and it falls down, generally in the form of rain.
Cirrus clouds are very high up fair weather clouds made almost entirely of ice crystals, not a factor at all. Cumulus clouds (the happy little puffs that go by in good weather, likewise, are not a factor at all). Stratus clouds are the widespread layered rain/snow clouds that result in drizzle or light-medium rain. These clouds cause some very small loss of signal, but we have plenty of excess signal strength to overcome. Our Seattle gateway, for example, is almost always under Stratus clouds and we never ever have fades or outages there.
Cumulonimbus clouds are thunderstorm clouds. They’re a somewhat different story. We do see some signal fading through a big thunderstorm clouds, not so much during the build up phase, but just before the big downpour occurs. It is highly unlikely that, before the rain starts to happen however, that the fade will be enough to affect a customer’s connection. It’s more likely that a thunderstorm with heavy rain some 2 or 3 miles from the customer’s home, but directly in the line of sight between the customer and the satellite (the exact direction that the customer’s dish points), causes a loss of signal. It could be sunny at the customer’s house, but raining cats and dogs just a few miles away, and if the alignment were perfect, an outage could occur. Not terribly likely, but yes it could happen. But again, the actual outage is caused by rain, not just by the clouds themselves.
Bottom line, clouds should never affect a customer’s connection. Only heavy rain or heavy wet snow.
