Emergency Pod: Recapping the historic August 2023 Tropo with Matt Sittel

The VHF DX Podcast

When history is made, we have to pod about it! And Bryce and Nick returned to recap the Tropocalypse of 2023, one of the largest tropo events ever recorded in North America, from August 19-24.

We highlighted several outstanding reports, including from Chris Lucas, Rob Ross, Andrew Knafel, Greg Coniglio, Dave Nieman, Chris Kadlec, Bill Hepburn, Tim Land, and the magical Marble, NC autologger.

Then, we spoke at length with Matt Sittel of Manhattan, KS, who had some of the most impressive logs of the event, as far east as London, ON, Grove City, PA, and Roanoke, VA. Hear Matt give outstanding insight into his receptions, how he slept right through the Roanoke tropo, and how 87.7 MeTV FM Chicago became his work from home soundtrack.

Matt is a degreed meteorologist and works as the Assistant State Climatologist at Kansas State University. He gave us some great meteorological background for the event, including how watching the dew points climb made a difference, particularly for particularly noteworthy logs he had into Colorado and Wyoming!

This was a great episode, giving a probably once in a lifetime DX event the attention it deserves!

Some key links from the episode:

Tim Land (Kingsport, TN) tropo logs on map: https://wtfda.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Aug-Tropo-Map.jpg

Tim Land's RDS screen captures: https://wtfda.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/RDS-screen-caps.jpg

Matt Sittel's DX and Weather Radio webpage: http://matthewsittel.com/

Matt Sittel's K-State climate blog: http://climate.k-state.edu/