Comment by askvictor

I was on a multi-day hike (Tasmania, Australia) some years ago, where we would need to know if snow was falling further ahead, as the pass would be difficult in snow, so we would need to turn back in that case; it would be easier to turn back well before reaching the pass. I packed an AM radio to listen to the weather forecast in the morning; before sunrise, the ionosphere reflects AM waves, so the distance of the signal is greatly enhanced (the hike was in a mountainous area and had no straight-line to any radio towers). In fact, I couldn't get the local radio station's reception, but did get reception for heaps of other stations, one of them over 2000km away; I almost wonder if the local station was being drowned out by distant ones (or more likely the ionosphere reflection is better a shallow angles)