Bizarre Atmospheric Effects

Due to some bizarre atmospheric conditions today, whilst sitting in Redruth, Cornwall, I was able to pick up, as clear as a bell, RDS station name and all, several radio stations from Wales.

I was getting BBC Radio Cymru, BBC Radio Wales, Real Radio, Radio Pembrokshire and also some Welsh frequencies of some national radio stations (I especially noticed Radio 4, way further up the band than the local broadcast is, but there may have been others too). Then around 4PM, when the sun started to go in, the whole lot disappeared within a space of minutes.

I noticed from the weather reports on Radio Wales that it's been quite a muggy day in South Wales today, and it was a goregous day here - as I said until 4PM when the first hints of poorer weather set it and the sun started to go.

Presumably there were some atmospheric conditions that were carrying the FM signals hundreds of miles further south than usual.

Anyone else experienced anything similar today?

Something simular happened to me when going in West Wales, we were listening to the local station The Wave, then it went out of reach and we started receiving a station from Ireland, the RDS displayed a name of a station from Ireland, and there was something about local information in the Wexford county, and that was a warm summer day.

Radio can do odd things sometimes, especially when the weather is like this. Not so long ago I was listening to the radio in bed and picked up Southern FM loud and clear. Not sure why - the weather wasn't particularly interesting, nor were there any other odd things going on! And Brighton to Southend is a fair distance.

I live way up here in Scotland and pick up French and German radio stations.

Could this be a phenomenon known as tropospheric lift taking place down there?

On the M6 just before you enter the Cumbrian mountains you can pick the "The Pulse of West Yorkshire".

I once picked up crystal clear reception of Invicta FM from Kent in Boston and also Severn Sound....

For some reason at Lunchtime in my sister's car we could pick up BBC Radio Sheffield rather clearly.

Other things I forgot to mention. A reasonably sensitive car tuner can usually pick up BBC Radio Devon in west Cornwall perfectly (well, my definition of 'perfectly' is that it sounds good, is in stereo, and is strong enough for the RDS information to get through). Today, whilst you could still get something out of 103.4, the stereo indicator was flickering and it was too weak for the RDS to get through.

To bring this back onto the TV front, most nights I can just about pick up another TV channel from where I live in Redruth. It's far too weak a reception to see any channel branding (very fuzzy picture, barely discernable at all actually, no sound), but it's there nonetheless. It's only ever there in the middle of the night. I can never recognise it as being any UK terrestrial channel at all - I've had my pocket TV up next to the big set a few times and nothing on 1-5 matches what I could see on this channel. I've even checked the ITV schedules to see if I was getting a different ITV station but I wasn't. I think it's an Irish TV station, but I've never worked out quite what it is.

For some reason we can pick up a very weak signal for Channel M (The RSL for Manchester) even though the channel's the signal is only for Central and (I think) East Manchester, but we can get a bit in Warrington, which I find odd. Though as long as we have the aerial pointing the right way (Which we can't as it's pointing towards Manchester way) we can pick up some form of reception from Moel-Y-Parc in North Wales, but if you use an indoor aerial you can get a fuzzy reception with normal sound for all of the main 4 channels in Wales.

But considering the part of the country you're in cwathen I would have thought the best you could pick up would be from a South Wales transmitter or something. Or it could be an RSL or something.

When I was messing with the tuner once and I managed to get a fuzzy Channel 4, though at first I thought it was S4C, but it wasn't, so I could have been picking up a signal from Emely Moor. Though an Asda that's closer to Merseyside was proudly showing BBC One Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on one of their TV's, using a normal aerial.

Where is Southern Radio based as I received whilst driving in my home town in Milton Kenyes and the station ID was displayed on RDS as well.

Southern FM is a Sussex station based in Brighton and the coverage area stretches up to Crawley and Tunbridge Wells. This map shows Southern's area, and I've added the local Southend and Tunbridge Wells stations to show you how far the signal's straying:

http://www.maps.rab.co.uk/rab/map/rab.asp?station=13,22,96&zooml=Snug