September 28, 2026 – Listeners to WSOY-AM and WDZ-AM may notice brief interruptions in programming during the first week or so of October due to a natural phenomenon known as a sun outage.
Sun outages occur when the Sun lines up directly behind a communications satellite from the perspective of a receiving antenna on Earth. The Sun produces radio-frequency energy across a broad range of frequencies, and when it enters the antenna’s line of sight, that solar noise can overwhelm the much weaker satellite signal the antenna is trying to receive. NOAA confirms that solar radio-frequency interference can cause degradation or complete loss of a satellite downlink when the Sun passes into the receiving antenna’s beam.
The phenomenon occurs around the spring and fall equinoxes as the geometry between the Earth, Sun and satellites lines up.
For WSOY-AM and WDZ, the interruption is expected to occur roughly between 1:45 and 2:05 p.m. on most days during the first week or so of October. The stations may temporarily go silent before the satellite signal returns.
