She says she has noticed a correlation between strong winds (“strong” is undefined) and the number of times we lose internet service or it slows to a crawl. When that happens, the first thing we do is disconnect the power to our modem, wait a bit, and then plug it back in. Fixes the problem, oh, about 50% of the time.
We have, like many people, a coaxial cable that connects our smart TV and our computers via modem and a router.
The cable is anchored to a 2nd story corner of our house and extends to the top of a utility pole in our back alley, about 50 meters away. There is a slight amount of slack, about on par with the power line and landline telephone line (unused) that travel along side the internet cable.
Like I said, she thinks a windy day will disrupt our internet service. I say there is confirmation bias in her observations. (Actually, I just think that, while nodding my head at her.)
We also have cable internet, and we see a similar effect just watching cable TV channels, with dropouts and lost signal, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t also affect our internet connection to a similar degree.
You could also have a cable somewhere-or-other pulling free entirely, or a broken tree branch falling on one. The actual repairs might take a few hours, but on a shorter timescale, the network might be able to reroute around the damage.
Also consider that cable internet service is inherently a bi-directional signal. If the incoming 0’s also get jostled, the outgoing 1’s can no longer fit through the holes cleanly.
Even if it didn’t rain at the time of wind, it could be water related still. The wind shaking it up the cable, the water gets distributed into in between contacts… the pure water doesn’t conduct well.
After a while the water will fill with ions or dissolved metal , and conduct better.
But that still isn’t great, because it can cause a short to the shielding or similar,., which means that the other conductor’s noise (picked up from AM radio stations, for example), is added to the signal.
Also the powdering of the oxide on the contacts can contribute, by filling the gap between the conductors with nonconductive dry oxide. The contact can improve again after a while, they call it “wetting”, its the effect of the oxide in the joint becoming a better conductor after a while…
This is all a bit pseudoscience , but the effect is real. I have seen telephone sockets with oxide on the contacts… Often the coax cable uses copper as the contact … this oxidises easily. No gold in the coax cable joints…