BLOG: Skipping the radio fantastic

    We’re not in Kansas. Or Tulsa, Okla. Or even Fort Smith, Ark. But for a few hours one afternoon last week it may have sounded that way.

    Atmospheric anomalies played havoc with local FM radio reception on Wednesday, pulling in signals from more than 1,000 miles away.

    While driving home — a quick 12-mile commute from Batavia to Le Roy — I thought something was wrong with my radio. I could not get a Rochester or Buffalo radio station to come in. On WBEE-FM (92.5) I could hear some music, but it sounded like it was coming out of a white noise machine. Other stations seemed to have just disappeared. Nothing. Even WGCC-FM in Batavia was overtaken by static (though sometimes with college-radio music it’s hard to tell).

    But the radio was functioning. Nothing had been amiss during the morning drive. There was reception in the afternoon, too, it just wasn’t coming from the usual places. The scan button was stopping and music was playing clearly from stations that the scan button had never stopped on before.

    I felt like I was in an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Or maybe the fabric of the universe was ripping apart. Something strange was happening. My wife looked at me like I was having a breakdown.

    Yet I know what I heard.

    I could have sung along with Al Green: “Let's, let's stay together/Loving you whether, whether/Times are good or bad, happy or sad.”

    It was CD-clear sound coming out of my radio on 104.7 FM — “Kool Oldies” in Fort Smith, Ark.

    Fort Smith, Ark., is about 1,200 miles from Batavia.

    So is Tulsa, Okla., where I was listening to K.C. on the afternoon drive at KMOD-FM (97.5), which calls itself “Tulsa’s Rock Station.”

    Later, another station had a time check of 5:46 p.m. The clock in my truck said 6:49 (it’s a little fast, but not an hour fast.) The announcer then made a reference to “the Missouri Valley.”   

    Altoona. Indianola. I heard them all.

    And I was not losing my mind.

    Scott Fybush heard them, too. He listened to KMOD for a time, and a station in Kansas.

    Fybush, who is sometimes heard on WXXI-AM,  is a freelance radio consultant and editor of Northeast Radio Watch, an online publication that tracks the ever-changing industry.

    What we were experiencing is a phenomenon called “sporadic E-skip.”

    Fybush explains: “It’s a phenomenon that happens primarily in the summer months, when a layer of the ionosphere becomes ionized in such a way that it functions as a mirror at certain frequencies, including at times the FM radio dial.”

    Basically, a radio station’s signal bounces around the atmosphere and can be picked up a great distance away.

    Even the most powerful FM signals don’t normally reach more than 80 or 90 miles But E-skip, Fybush explained in an e-mail, usually brings in stations at a range of about 700 to 1,200 miles. .

    “When an (E-skip) opening is especially strong, as today’s was, it can bring in so many distant signals that they wipe nearby stations off the dial, as you experienced,” he wrote.

    I had assumed that the station referencing Altoona was in Pennsylvania, but Fybush notes that one of the interesting things about E-skip “is that it doesn’t bring in signals at closer range, so it’s actually more common here to hear Louisiana, Oklahoma and Kansas (as I was this afternoon) instead of Pennsylvania.”

    A Mapquest search of Altoona reveals nine possibilities — from as close as Altoona, Pa. (about 270 miles from Batavia), to as far away as Altoona, Wash. (2,800 miles).

    Without hearing station call letters or other names and places that might afford a clue, it was impossible to determine which Altoona I heard. Six fall within the typical range of E-skip. They are in Iowa (878 miles), Wisconsin (885), Alabama (934), Kansas (1,164), Florida (1,200 miles) and Louisiana (1,234 miles).

    Same story for Indianola — though I heard ads for a car dealer and a lawyer. There are 10 possibilities — as close as Illinois (640 miles) and as far away as California (2,830 miles). Those falling in the E-skip range also include Mississippi (1,089 miles), Florida (1,230 miles) and Oklahoma (1,236 miles).

    E-skip happens pretty often from May through July, but is rare at other times. It can reappear in December and January, Fybush wrote.

    I’ve experienced the phenomenon before, but don’t recall it being so widespread across the radio spectrum.

    By Thursday morning, though, the airwaves were back to normal.