I have a little experience with powerline noise here in semi-rural southern
Oklahoma. I can't claim any expertise but it seems to work like this; As dry
weather dries the poles and hardware any arc sparking that occurs has to
span greater arc lengths and gets louder. If w e get rain (not so common in
the last year or so) the insulating factor of the dry poles and hardware is
diminished, spark arcs are shorter and the noise is reduced. Not every
electronic noisemaker is an outdoor iten, but if wet weather quiets'em down,
they probably are.Last year I had 30 days of S9+ noise before the power
companies "noise" crew could get to me and fix the problem. Turns out the
pole with my power service connection had an arcing ground wire which they
fixed in about 30 minutes. My background noise level dropped to a more
tolerable S1 oor S2. My pole was an old one and the ground wire on the pole
ran from the very top of the pole so it could act as a lightning rod as well
as a regular ground wire (they said the newer poles aren't wired that way
anymore). It, of neccessity,. ran close to insulator mounting hardware and
that was my noise source. They cut the top couple of feet off the old ground
wire, tightened the actual ground connections, and made my day.

Harold
KD5SAK

"Rick (W-A-one-R-K-T)" wrote in message
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What is it about general "noise" that makes it go way down during rainy
weather?