Monday, October 25, showered the Maltese islands with two things: government budget measures and heavy rains, so heavy that we had floating coffins on the flooded roads. That morning the Maltese islands were hit by one of the worst thunderstorms and floods in recent years.
Given that the worst of the storm hit very early in the morning when people were waking up to go to work, local radio stations relayed the appeal by the Civil Protection Department to stay indoors until further notice. Facebook was also abuzz with similar warnings from users. The first pictures and videos of the storm and its devastation slowly made it to Facebook and YouTube, until the so-called “floating coffins” video became a real sensation on YouTube, linked by the local media websites and social networks. It almost stole the limelight from Finance Minister Fenech on the day.
The floating coffins videos, supported by other videos of cars being carried away by rivers of storm water, became an instant hit and recorded tens of thousands of views in the first day alone. It became a sort of national joke, though the undertaker had little to smile about when he realised the damage he had incurred in his Qormi stores.
Apart from making excellent material for both professional and amateur photographers and videographers alike, the weather does affect the information technology and communication services. Indeed, the weather is a constant factor in quality of some of these services, as i-Tech sought to confirm with the local providers.
“While on most rainy days and during thunderstorms, telecommunication systems operations are not affected, in very extreme weather conditions there could be instances which affect parts of the system,” a spokesman for Vodafone Malta told i-Tech.
Heavy rain can disrupt microwave links used for the backhaul of traffic from the radio base station sites to the main core site. Such disruptions are intermittent in nature and although in some cases this may cause temporary service outages (depending on the persistence of the weather conditions), these are usually short lived in nature and service is restored as soon as the level of precipitation decreases.
Lightning strikes to outdoor overhead structures can often cause power surges over distributed wired infrastructure networks including power grid and telephone lines. Mobile phone base station installations are designed to offer thunderstorm protection through the use of a dedicated earthing installation and sure protection components.
The installation design protects the base station equipment from damage and a battery backup also ensures that the base station continues to operate at least for a couple of hours during power outages, the Vodafone spokesman explained.
A spokesman from Go agrees that mobile reception should not normally be affected by weather conditions but in practice the mobile networks experience very high levels of traffic when such events occur.
“This phenomenon is often accompanied by power failures at several base station sites. On some occasions the combination of these two factors has resulted in some unavailability of service in various locations.”
If the mobile service fails, Go’s fixed line network keeps functioning in case of power failure or interruptions, given that the network is self-powered via the exchanges.
The same spokesman added that the company’s digital terrestrial TV network reception “should not normally be affected by adverse weather conditions.” However, signals received at Go’s head-end could be affected by so-called “rain fade” and “sun outages”. Rain fade is when the heavy rain and thick clouds disrupt reception from satellites in earth’s orbit, while sun outages occur when the sun’s solar radiation interferes with the satellites’ signal. This occurs mostly in February, March, September and October, that is, around the time of the equinoxes.
Melita’s head-end also relies on satellite dishes to obtain foreign TV channel transmissions but the company reassures that its infrastructure is good enough to stand all but the most severe freak weather conditions.
“Communication networks are built both aerially and under ground level and the system is designed, built and maintained to be minimally affected by weather conditions. However, highly extreme weather conditions do sometimes affect the underlying infrastructure (such as roads and buildings) and in this case that portion of Melita’s system which is interconnected to the affected infrastructure will also, to a certain extent, be affected.
“However, this happens only in the case of very major and atypical weather-related crises. Although very heavy rainfall would normally make the already marginal signal fade, Melita avoids this kind of situation by using very large tracking TVRO dishes,” a company representative told i-Tech.
The local providers’ fibre-based network communication network seems to be the least prone to any problems caused by severe weather and lightening strikes as fibre-optic cables do not conduct electricity and the cabling is waterproof.
However the copper network can be affected by lightning strikes, especially the cables that are exposed out in the open.
So what can home users do to minimise the impact of inclement weather, especially lightning strikes, and avoid equipment being “toasted”?
The Go spokesman warned that lightning could induce a current in any exposed wire (telephone/power/Ethernet) that can cause damage to any device connected to that wire. It is therefore good practice to remove the wire that connects an ADSL splitter to the devices to eliminate the risk of damage of the ADSL and computer equipment. There is not much one can do to protect electronic devices from a direct lightning hit.
A surge protector, however, protects electronic equipment from electrical surges that are a result of faults on the national grid or strikes by lightning. In the case of ADSL, it is important that the surge protector used is compatible.
However, the Melita spokesman advised against disconnecting the Melita cable modem from the home network.
“This is not always necessary or practical, as Melita isolates its external network from the customer premise equipment (set top box, modem) by using a double galvanic isolator. Moreover, we replace damaged equipment at no charge if the cause is determined to be attributable to Melita. However this would not protect against every situation as devices are often connected to other internal networks which could be the source of the surge. Surge arrestors, good earthing practices and system isolation all contribute to minimising risks in these areas.”