Community Chat

[Marp]

I'm in western NC and it is a given that much of the area is likely to lose power.  We are now officially under an ice storm warning.

Usually when power is lost cell towers remain operational.  My question is if the towers are covered in ice will they remain operational?

Anyone with ice storm experience that can answer that question?

[Laura14]

This was asked on reddit a few days ago.  Here were the responses:

"Cell towers can be shut down by ice in several ways.

1. Lack of power. Some sites have backup battery power, but it's not infinite.

2. Thick ice can obstruct or reduce signal strength.

3. Truly heavy ice can actually bend dishes out of alignment. Those drum like things you see on some towers are unidirectional antennas. The weight of ice can bend them down, so that they don't communicate with their neighbor nodes."

"Cell towers need power to run. Most have backup generators. But if the fuel runs out for them, the towers go down.

Backup generators can be natural gas, battery, diesel or something else.

I live in a rural area. Cell towers went down when landlines were still up. But that only helps you if your landline runs fully off the phone line (ie doesn’t plug into an outlet)."

"Cell towers can go out due to lack of electricity if it goes on long enough. Found that out in Helene where after a couple days my family started to lose signal as the backup generators for the cell towers started to run dry."

[JeanLouiseFinch]

I don't know the specific answer but I saw something this morning about setting your phone to "satellite" if the cell tower isn't transmitting.  I'm not sure if satellite will provide full internet access or just texting ability.  

[Laura14]

They also recommended for your phone itself that cold will drain your tech batteries so keep your devices warm aka bundle them up if you lose heat. 

ETA if you have a limited data plan, you may want to switch to airplane mode when the wifi goes out to protect your data privileges and only use your phone when necessary. 

[Estellee]

I believe it can affect the towers in some cases but hopefull won't happen @Marp 

[Marp]

Thank you for such detailed information in your posts @Laura14.  Very helpful.

The irony is I recently changed from a POTS landline to cell because the cost of the POTS became outrageous, especially for someone that doesn't use the phone much.

[Marp]

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@JeanLouiseFinch wrote:

I don't know the specific answer but I saw something this morning about setting your phone to "satellite" if the cell tower isn't transmitting.  I'm not sure if satellite will provide full internet access or just texting ability.  

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Unfortunately @JeanLouiseFinch, I don't have that option on my phone.

[Estellee]

Having a landline phone that works without electricity is the best thing to have. I've lost power many times during hurricanes but my one wall phone in the kitchen always works.

[We rescue cats]

We still have a landline in the house (whew!) and we have a duel fuel inverter-and if things really go awry we have the motorhome, it has a generator. The heat runs on electric and/or propane. The house has a pellet stove as long as we have power.  We had a horrible storm several years ago, we were snowed in for 5 days. 

Finally our plow guy made it to us!! The blue line is the road from the main road to our home. . . we had 4 feet of snow on the road (high winds!).

[geezerette]

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@Estellee wrote:

Having a landline phone that works without electricity is the best thing to have. I've lost power many times during hurricanes but my one wall phone in the kitchen always works.

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I agree.  However, they've stopped supporting in-the-ground landlines in my areas so my good old reliable landline became more unreliable than my cell.  

But I'd feel more secure with it (in working condition) in circumstances like this than depending on cell service, which has already proved wonky for several people today and our weather isn't even here yet.