Contrary to what article says you can sometimes hear an FM radio station under ‘skip’ conditions. You can sometimes hear stations from the U.S. South in Upstate NY.
It's known as tropospheric ducting or propagation, where an ionized channel forms in the atmosphere which can reflect radio. Waveguides above the clouds. Under unusual conditions it can enable very long-distance UHF/VHF. Analog TV has been sporadically received out to over 1000 km. As I understand, pulling it off is harder with digital modes, as they're generally quite sensitive to phase variations caused by multipath distortion.
Tropospheric ducting happens at low altitudes, a lot of times in the summer across Lake Ontario, people in Canada tune into TV stations in Syracuse and I sometimes talk to them on a 2 m repeater south of Cayuga lake.
The other is a ‘skip’ caused by a dense spot in the ionosphere.
Ham radio enthuasists take advantage of unusual propagation but so do many people who like listening to commercial broadcasts from far away.
