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My house is surrounded by thousands of acres of mature hardwoods, and there are tens of thousands of trees between me and the transmitters
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Trees block TV signals.
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/antennas/siting.html
scroll down to
Trees and UHF
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Yes, rain tends to make an edgy signal go out. But, and I bet there's a scientific reason for this, when I was on analog the signal came in better when it was raining.
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Wet trees block TV signals even worse than dry trees.
With analog TV, the signals just got a little more snowy as they got weaker.
With digital TV, they suddenly drop out at a certain point as they get weaker. This point is called the "Digital Cliff."
The sudden dropout is caused by the FEC (Forward Error Correction system). The FEC is designed to correct the digital signal errors to maintain a good quality picture. As the digital signal gets weaker, there are more and more digital errors. The FEC has a limit to how many errors it can correct. Once that limit is exceeded, the FEC gives up, and the signal drops out.