[TowerTalk] new form of snow static

[Eric Scace K3NA]

    This is for everyone who complains about the snow static QRN on the bands.

    The big snowstorm is rolling over Boston.  It's snowing, sleeting, raining with lightning and 
thunder.  (A commercial jet just got hit by lightning on takeoff from Logan Airport; it returned 
safely.)

    In my apartment (top, 4th floor of a brick building in the city of Boston) I am hearing coronal 
discharges off my office's cabling whenever the wind gusts up above 20 knots or so.  There is no 
radio here -- this is audio.  It sounds like someone quietly crumbling up an old piece of cellophane.

    Cables from the roof-mounted vertical dipole, a satellite TV dish antenna, and outdoor weather 
sensors on the roof above my office enter one corner of the office, laced up with Ethernet, USB, 
power and other stuff.  I get the occasional indoor 'tick' when a lightning strike occurs within a 
mile or so.  It doesn't come from any cable in particular that I can determine... just induced 
voltage differential on something.

    Lots of computers and stuff humming quietly away, oblivious to it all.  A rising potential lifts 
all chassis (we hope!)...

-- Eric K3NA