In your area/country, did you have a word or phrase to describe the static white noise on a television set not tuned to a channel?

"Myrornas krig"

"The war of the ants"

Nothing more fancy in Boston than "snow".

War of the ants

We called it static.

What prompted this question is some Japanese TV service ended this past weekend for a relative and the word to describe the static noise was "sand storm".

Thought it might be interesting to hear what it's called elsewhere.

Schneesturm (snow storm) or Ameisenkrieg (ant war) in German.

Snow

"the war of the ants" (myrornas krig)

/Sweden

Snow or static. It's cosmic microwave background radiation - the remnants of the big bang.

Always called it "Ant races"

Flimmer

In Poland it was „śnieży” (snowing).

It's snow

We called it the "Chinese rice fight"

...the 80s was a different time lol

Back in the days when we all had antennas and cable hadn't been born yet, the static stations were a great thing to watch if there might be a tornado in your area. Apparently if one formed, it would significantly change the look of the snow on the TV and give you a warning to quickly head to the basement. I never actually saw it happen, but there were a couple times we had local warnings and my parents plopped me down to keep an eye on the TV.

In Chiba city, it is described as "The sky above the port"

Static or Snow where I grew up in the US Southeast

fleas

Dreh die Antenne nach links, ich krieg nur rauschen hier unten.

It would be white noise, “weißes rauschen”, but nobody ever said the “white” part.

UK here, we just called it static.

In Germany it's called "Weißes Rauschen" (so akin to white noise, white rustling / murmuring?). It seems to be both about the sound (rauschen) and the visuals (weiß).