Mapping the Storm: Geospatial Impacts of Severe Weather on LEO Network Performance
2026-06-01 • Networking and Internet Architecture
Networking and Internet Architecture
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied how weather affects Starlink's internet service across the United States. They used detailed data from over 1,200 Starlink terminals and matched it with local weather conditions to see how things like heavy rain or snow impact the connection. They found that bad weather can cause significant slowdowns or outages lasting minutes to hours for more than half of the affected users. This research is the first big study connecting satellite internet performance with detailed weather data and helps improve how these systems plan for and handle weather problems.
LEO satellite constellationsStarlinkbroadband connectivityping latencytelemetry dataspatio-temporal variabilitynetwork performanceweather impactservice outagesgeospatial analysis
Authors
Sina Ehsani, Bhanu Pallakonda, Pragyana K. Mishra
Abstract
LEO satellite constellations, led by deployments such as Starlink, are playing an increasingly pivotal role in enabling global broadband connectivity. However, the reliability and performance of these space-based networks are highly sensitive to environmental dynamics, particularly localized weather phenomena that exhibit strong spatio-temporal variability. In this study, we present a continental-scale geospatial analysis of weather-induced performance degradation in the Starlink LEO network, with a focus on the contiguous United States. Leveraging a unique dataset comprising more than 870,000 terminal hours of minute-level telemetry from 1,292 Starlink terminals, we integrate high-resolution localized weather observations to quantify the impact of various meteorological conditions. We evaluated key performance indicators (KPIs)-including ping latency, ping drop rate, and signal quality-using spatial join techniques and time-aligned correlation with classified weather events. Our analysis reveals that severe weather events, such as thunderstorms with heavy rain or snow, have a pronounced effect on network performance. In particular, more than 55% affected terminals experienced substantial degradation. Temporal continuity analysis at the minute level shows that such degradation can lead to sustained impairments or full service outages lasting from several minutes to multiple hours.This work contributes to the first large-scale empirical study linking LEO satellite Internet performance with fine-grained weather data in both space and time. Our findings offer actionable insights for geospatial predictive modeling, weather-aware network provisioning, and resilient satellite communication system design. We also propose a framework for incorporating weather-inferred performance variability into future geospatial planning and service-level forecasting tools for LEO-based Internet systems.