In the late 80s1 the University of Arizona had a satellite link to the John von Neumann Center for our internet connectivity. The link itself was a 57Kbit satellite connection using that giant roof mounted antenna on top of the computer center.
One morning the VitaLink Corp Satellite NOC called us to see if we had lost power as they had lost signal from us.
It turns out we had some snow that morning and the dish collected a bunch of it. It turned out our dish didn’t have the “cold weather package” (a heater) and thus was “down” until the snow melted of its own accord.
We sent photos by surface mail (no digital cameras) to VitaLink - they could not believe Tucson got snow at all, never mind enough snow to take out their dish.
Ric
Editor’s note. There was a large snowfall on Christmas 1987 in Tucson, this might be the event in question.
- JNVC was only around from 1985-1990 so I’m using that as a time frame ↩