Starlink snow-melt heater draws 100W+ extra but still fails in heavy ice storms

Starlink's built-in dish heater ('snowmelt configuration') activates automatically in cold weather to keep the dish clear, drawing an additional 50-100W on top of the dish's normal 50-75W consumption -- roughly doubling power draw during winter. Despite this, the heater cannot keep up with heavy freezing rain, ice storms, or rapid snow accumulation. Ice builds up on the dish surface faster than it melts, causing signal degradation and complete outages lasting hours. The real pain: a rural family in northern Minnesota or upstate New York during a January ice storm loses internet at exactly the moment they most need it -- when roads are impassable, schools are closed, and they need connectivity for remote work, weather updates, and emergency communication. The power consumption spike also strains circuits in older rural homes with limited electrical capacity, and off-grid users may face total system shutdown as batteries drain. Manually clearing the dish means climbing onto an icy roof in dangerous conditions. This persists because the heater is a thermal solution constrained by the dish's surface area and power budget, and severe ice accretion simply exceeds what any flat-panel heater can handle without massive power draw.