Sometimes there are some things that just remain unexplained, like the paranormal. This phenomenon is a regular happening and has very little to do with ghosts or UFOs. It is known simply as "Sporadic E-skip". If you were tuning around stations on your FM dial Tuesday, you may have noticed something rather odd. Maybe your favorite station was replaced with a totally different format, or maybe you heard a commercial for a location in Texas, sporadic e-skip at work.
From about May through August, every year, clouds of unusually ionized atmospheric gas reflect radio stations, allowing reception from 400-1,500 miles away. Tuesday, Sheridan and Buffalo were inundated with stations from Texas and Louisiana. One such example was KLAK 97.5 FM from Tom Bean, Texas, 959 miles away. Here is an audio clip recorded live...
Some local stations, including one carrying Pilgrim Radio on 99.3 in Sheridan, were completely covered by other stations several times during the event, which started around 5:30 pm local time and ended about 9 pm.
Stations can be strong, such as this example of 96.9 KZMZ Alexandria, Louisiana, as received in Sheridan on July 12th last year...
Other stations received in Sheridan Tuesday included most of Houston's FM dial, and a few southwestern Louisiana stations as well. The phenomenon mostly affects the low band of television (channels two through six) and FM, but can affect other services such as aircraft frequencies, to CB radios. Many radio listeners reported "skip" Tuesday across the United States. Several websites are dedicated to tracking or explaining the phenomenon. Here are a few: [1][2][3][4] Image below: WIXX 101.1 Green Bay, Wisconsin, as received in June last year in Sheridan, WY.
