Tonight, there are big thuderboomers rolling across the middle part of the country. For us, there’s been some boom, rain at work, but dry conditions here at the ol’ ranch.

So what’s the “end of and era” about?

With these big storms, I am seeing analog television signals from Montana and South Dakota. Unfortunately, the only two open low channels we have here are 3 and 6, so the pickings are a little slim. The locals are getting pounded though!

But in a couple of years, this will no longer be possible. DTV will have roosted all the analog stations out, and I expect it’ll be very hard to figure out when these kind of openings are taking pace, and frankly, I’m not even sure how well HD will work with E-layer and F2-layer propagation — so many of the HD signals are higher in the UHF band, and those just don’t get affected in the same way.

So enjoy the racket while you can kids — just like the opening itself, this ain’t gonna last much longer.