As the climate is changing, and the weather is getting scarier. A new Internet trend giving people an escape in the form of nostalgia. It’s called weatherwave, and it’s a subgenre of another popular YouTube phenomenon known as vaporwave.
It looks like this: Throwback, often pop jazzy tunes playing over videos of people’s old camcorder home videos. Or, when it comes to weatherwave, videos of vintage Weather Channel.
Culture writer Ade Adeniji joined The Show to talk more about it.

Full conversation
ADE ADENIJI: It's a mix of like visuals and audio, but really the key is that it's kind of, you know, it's electric music genre that really kind of really merged in the early 2010s. But then it's also set to these, you know, nostalgic videos and imagery. It could be anything from like an old “Transformers” cartoon clip to kind of like, you know, someone's family vacation on VHS down to like Disneyland.
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Really, the key is that it's about the past, it's set to music and then the different visuals will change depending on the subgenre.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. Right. Well, I want to talk about one of those at least now because there's a subgenre here at least that I'm interested in about, about weatherwave, right. That brings in specifically the Weather Channel of all things in these videos. Tell us what this is like.
ADENIJI: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as it turns out it wasn't just me who was a big fan of the Weather Channel going up. You know, it's a huge thing that everyone, you know, from the ‘80s when it first launched into the ‘90s. And ‘90s kids or ‘80s kids either in the background or directly they could have been traveling in a, you know, lonely motel, but everyone was watching or came into contact with the Weather Channel. You know, it was 24 hours, 365, 7 days a week. So it's just this constant loop.
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And kind of this sub genre called weatherwave, you know, plays on that ubiquity.
GILGER: OK. So you've, you've written about this, you've read the comments, like you've talked to some experts about what this might mean, I guess. Tell us a little bit about why you think this is hitting a nerve right now in our culture.
ADENIJI: I mean, there's, there's a, there's a couple of different angles. The first one is, you know, kind of like I alluded to. The Weather Channel was just this huge, you know, Touchtone and, you know, really still is. But for anyone who's, you know, millennial, even, you know, a little bit after we all had this constant loop of this channel that you had the national forecast. But then you also had the local on the eighth. So whether you're in New York City or, you know, Ashville, you know, it was just there for everyone.
Then another angle I was playing with was kind of just a way to kind of hide from the harsher realities of climate these days. You know, of course, we're just coming on the heels of, you know, the awful, you know, devastation from Hurricane Helene. And, you know, she was liveblogging about that as it was coming ashore But just these unprecedented storms, you know, from a Category 1 to Category 4 in 12 hours, like over this ultra hot water in the Gulf of Mexico. And really wreaked this devastation, not on the coast, but I mean, you know, it did, but then unusually inland, you know, these were like high mountain communities in North Carolina that have never seen something like this. And, you know, unfortunately it's gonna take years for everyone to, you know, come up out of it.
GILGER: Tell us a little bit about your interest in this, in particular, right? Like you're a self-proclaimed like weather nerd, right? You love weather.
ADENIJI: You know, so I don't know if you have a Nigerian dad, but I do. And there was no fun to be had during the school year. And so it was kind of just, it was either I watched the news, which of course is a 7-year-old, bored me. So I discovered the Weather Channel and this is kind of my retreat, got obsessed with clouds.
And then later on did this, I randomly did this internship during high school with this meteorologist who like the first person to bring a cloud stamp for the U.S. Postal Service. All these like connections to weather. Kind of took a break from it for a while. And, you know, starting like last year I started, you know, ramping up my weather writing again, and I've been doing it for Accuweather and some other sites and been having a blast and that's really why it's been on my mind.
GILGER: Yeah. Yeah. So this is definitely on your mind and apparently, you know, hits a nerve with a lot of other people, too. So when you're looking at Weather Channel videos in particular and the music that goes over, it is specific, I guess I should say. I mean, like, what's the effect do you think? Like, I watched some of this and, and I think you hit on the word in your article for Wired, like it's unsettling, especially because of the kind of climate reality we're living in now.
ADENIJI: I mean, there's always this, like, this weird dissonance. It's like, you know, there's popular weather figures from back in the day, Jim Canto. He is still around. He's huge now. But, you know, you got to start just, you know, chasing storms. Or this other guy, Steve Lyons. But you have like, on the one hand, all this soothing music, you know, it's as if you're at the beach. But, you know, on the other hand, he's there, like, you know, waving his hands madly, you know, because it would be a thunderstorm warning.
So there's, it's a weird contrast, you know, on the one hand, you could argue that maybe it's kind of, you know, lulling you to, to sleep if you will, there's like this crazy storm outside, but you just want to go to sleep so that this is what this sound provides. Or it could be in a way kind of, you know, playing dumb, you know, at, at this point what's going on with climate and with weather is, you know, quite concerning, and I think even some people in the past who, you know, were somewhat skeptical, like there's just too much evidence. The evidence is there. But vaporwave almost doubles down on the idea that oh, everything's ok because how else can you go through every day thinking about the catastrophe that we're dealing with?
GILGER: Yeah. So is this like digital escapism basically, like people diving into nostalgia in this way?
ADENIJI: Yeah. And I don't even think it necessarily has to be bad. I think some people had, you know, some reactions that were a little bit more strong. … But for me, I think nostalgia and kind of playing dumb on some level is required because again, some of this stuff is just, you know, quite overwhelming that sometimes you just want to get away from it all.
GILGER: Yeah. No, I can feel that, that's fair. You also dive into the, a little bit of the history of the Weather Channel itself and the guy who made its original music, which I can hear in my head as I'm asking this question. Tell us about that.
ADENIJI: I find it very important to find him because first of all, I love that music. You know, everyone knows, apparently he wrote 48 tracks that just want to loop for all the local on the eights around the country. So everyone on some level has this hum going on in their head for sure.
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But some people, some of these vaporwave artists have kind of taken his sounds, taking credit for videos and for music that is not theirs. And so of course, you know, that's not good. And so I, I felt like it was important to kind of connect with him and make sure his story was told.
And, you know, now you're at this weird breaking point. One on the other, on the one hand, you have Tramel Starks, this is the name of the, the composer. But then you also have these vaporwave artists and together they hold the memories of, you know, this nostalgic period of the Weather Channel.
GILGER: Yeah. So it does feel like specifically of this moment that weatherwave is, is hitting a nerve. Do you have any thoughts, predictions, things that you're already seeing on the horizon that you think might be kind of the next trend along these lines?
ADENIJI: There's another one of these subgenres called “memewaves” and you know, memes are still, I mean, I feel like I'm old now, but to me memes, feel memes feel still pretty new. But I can imagine a time where even these, you know, things that are relatively new will be old. And instead of, you know, video and the vaporwave setting, the sound of that, it's gonna be these, you know, crazy memes that have been popular in the last few years that will now have a vaporwave component to them.
GILGER: Wow, there it goes, time keeps rolling.