The Vaporwave Album Conditions at Hickory starts with static, as if you’re listening to a radio broadcast from the 1940s. The first two tracks, “Foothills” and “Daily Commute,” start out monotonous and innocuous. Then the mood changes. Noises sound like warnings, warnings of something ominous. Beeps and tornado sirens start to interrupt the music. By the time you get to “Thunderheads” and “Squall,” you’re in the thick of it.

Kana, also known as Dreamweather, released the seven-track album on YouTube, where it is accompanied by a frozen image: a bright red severe weather warning for Hickory, North Carolina. It could be that Conditions is trying to warn you of an impending storm. It could be that the album is trying to lull you to sleep in the middle of it all with its soft, jazzy AM radio tones.

Kana is one of several artists who have combined yesterday’s weather reports with the lo-fi music genre vaporwave. Vaporwave emerged in the early 2010s and has recently boomed on YouTube. It is used as a soundtrack to nostalgic video footage such as family trips to Florida in the 90s or Transformers Cartoon clips. The effect is both unsettling and comforting – a visual reminder of a different, perhaps better era that cannot be relived.

As the trend evolved, many of the most popular vaporwave clips were those that layered ambient sounds over Weather Channel broadcasts from the 80s and 90s. How TwistersThese programs, some of which last eight hours, are reminiscent of a time when television and radio provided guidance during storms – and a time before climate change made extreme weather events more frequent.

Popular vaporwave artists play their music to weather forecasts from fearless storm chaser Jim Cantore. Others—sometimes members of the subgenre known as weatherwave—soothe you with sounds while longtime severe weather expert Steve Lyons waves his hands wildly to indicate an impending tornado in Indiana.

“As a kid, I would often just sit and watch the Weather Channel for hours,” says Kana. “I was very taken with the local weather forecasts, the music and the programs. When I discovered that other people were interested in this extreme niche, I was absolutely thrilled.”

Some of the most popular Weatherwave clips use a VHS recording of a Weather Channel broadcast on a random cold winter night in the ’90s. A 41-minute video by YouTuber onceinalifetime has nearly 900,000 views; another is an eight-hour megamood by chyllvester with nearly 650,000 views. Many comments below are nostalgic: “I practically grew up in hotels (long story). The Weather Channel was the only real constant from place to place. It helped me a lot then. And it still helps me now.”

The Weather Channel was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in May 1982. From the beginning, it combined its reliable weather reports with a steady stream of smooth jazz, a combination that came to define the 24/7/365 weather network. Whether you tuned in for the tropical update segment or international weather, the sounds remained consistent and even, even when the weather wasn’t cooperating.