All satellite internet has to deal with the effect of weather on their internet signals. As the internet waves travel through the air, anything in between the satellite dish and satellite could potentially affect the quality of the signal, thus affecting the speed of your internet connection. It is common for cloud cover and rain to affect satellite internet performance.
The effect of rain on the satellite dish is called rain fade. It is caused by the signal passing through the water droplets and getting bent, just like water bends light that is passing through it. This can distort and weaken the signal.
Starlink isn’t immune to rain fade, however users are giving very positive reports of performance during rain, even heavy storms. This is likely because Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which runs Starlink, has taken strong measures to prevent rain fade from having a large effect.
We do know about Starlink’s measures taken against snow interference. Starlink satellite dishes can detect that snow is present and then heat up to melt the snow so that it slides off the dish. They seem to be thinking of everything, and rain interference is usually toward the top of the list for satellite internet companies. What exact measures they’ve taken hasn’t been made clear, but what we do know is that performance has proven very consistent through various weather conditions.
