A device for estimating a likelihood of a wireless link outage includes a memory, a variability calculator, and an outage predictor. The memory maintains a history of signal quality for a signal received from a transmitter. The variability calculator is coupled to the memory. The variability calculator computes a variability statistic for the history of signal quality maintained in the memory. The outage predictor is coupled to the variability calculator. The outage predictor estimates the likelihood of the wireless link outage in direct proportion to the variability statistic.