Has anyone had issues with thunderstorms and GPS?

Could it be a possible power outage at the base?

It's possible, but I don't think it was incredibly likely... I saw reports of Texas-like 2 to 3 inches an hour from the storm, but not much in the way of wind.

Lighting can interfere with the GPS signals. Whether you are running static or rtk. I always shut the receiver off when there is lighting in the area. Lighting in the area of your base could definitely be a problem.

Yes, and you can fry a radio cause of static build up, if you use GPS with a radio you will sometimes get a shock picking up the base radio antenna. We pick up when thunderstorms are in the area.

If you were receiving corrections but just couldn't fix - in other words the base was still operational - yes, that could definitely be an issue. If the tropospheric delay is significantly different at the base than at the rover - in other words, the base is in a thunderstorm and the rover is in clear sky - this will definitely cause noticeable problems in almost all cases.

I have no data to back it up, but I have to believe a thunderstorm will affect GPS. It seems reasonable that if it will interrupt a signal from a television satellite, it will do the same with a GPS satellite signal.

Years and years and years ago in school, a prof. told us that rain does not effect GPS, but lightning does. At the time, he was talking about dual freq. long static observations, because RTK was just coming around, and were working on a static GPS network project in that class. I have no idea why lightning is bad for GPS, I don't think he every really explained it, but that stuck with me all these years and I avoid GPS in lightning.

Although, since this was a long time ago, in the GPS infancy days, it might not be an issue anymore. With RTK, since the data is instant and reacquires "fixed" fairly rapidly, so you'd think that while lightning could knock out your "fix", it would just snap back in when that interference cleared ... it could just be that lightning can cause a lot of cycle slips and screw up post processing, which is more of a static GPS problem ...

Good question though.

> At this point, I was in an open field and all morning I had no issues.

Uhhh....Is it really a good idea to stand in an open field hanging on to a 2 meter high aluminum pole, in a thunderstorm?

Just askin'.:-S

>...Do thunderstorms have an affect on the radio in an RTK setup...

They do on ours. When thunder and lightning start, ours always ends up horizontal in the truck, alongside me. The performance is severely degraded.

Yea, mine too!

Am using trimble 5800 for static observations. I found that when there is a slight drizzle, I am still able to get good observations, but once it is a thunderstorm. All my observation gets degraded and little point to leave them out in the rain.

Back when I ran Lieca gear, usually when the crews tried GPSing around storms, I had lots of problems processing the data.

Gavin the science guy will probably show up shortly to contradict me, but from my limited understanding:

Lightning generated electromagnetic interference occurs at a lower frequency than the GPS signal and rain fade occurs at a higher frequency; however both rain fade and lightning induced radio atmospheric signal can degrade the radio signal from the base.

That was a scintillating or was it a titillating reply to atmospheric conditions and GPS.

Once tested brand new GPS units during a hellacious lightning/rain event on the lakefront in new Orleans.
The thought process was if the receivers were damaged then returning them would be an easy proposition. They weren't damaged but the data was bad.

Back in the late 90's, the Ashtech Prism Software had the ability to plot the L1 & L2 signals for each epoch. Numerous times, the plots would show major spikes during lighting. In some cases, we could trim the spikes out of large static files and get a fix. In other cases, we would go through the proceedure get a fix; however, we would later determine that the position was incorrect. My understanding is that lighting changes the consistency of the L1 & L2 waves. Even a small change in the amplitude of the wave will affect accuracy.