Update: The section mentioned in this post is currently inactive, due to technical issues.

Starting today, you can get your local weather conditions, forecast, and radar from TWC Classics. Data is provided by the National Weather Service using a program called HAMweather. While every part of it should be functional at this point, I will be messing around with the design in the coming weeks. If you encounter any issues (not related to any data from the NWS) or have any comments on this new feature, feel free to contact me.

For those of you that used the "Your Local Forecast" area, you may have noticed that the current conditions part stopped working a few weeks ago. This application was created by someone else (HamWeather) and the free version is no longer supported or being developed. As a result, I have decided to remove the feature. In my opinion, fixing the bugs would be more trouble than it's worth.

I have also removed the TWC 30th Anniversary page. All content on that page can be found elsewhere on the site. And finally, I have removed the "classic" area (which was an older version of the site) to make room for new content. And speaking of new content, stay tuned! I hope to have some up in the next week or two.

I have made a few cosmetic changes to the site. In particular, I have added a "sidebar" to the blog pages. Whatever you're looking at in the blog, you'll have quick access to each category, the last 5 posts, and the RSS feed.

I have also added a list of category links to most pages in the site. A screen capture below shows where they are (in case you miss it). This is hidden by default, but can be expanded (or hidden) by clicking on the + sign.

I also fixed a bug in the search feature that was preventing the thumbnails from displaying.

When I created the timeline section late last year, the goal was to provide you with a look at how The Weather Channel was during a certain time frame. Originally, I organized the content by slogan (ie. "Weather you can always turn to"). That turned out to be a little difficult, so I re-organized the content by year.

While I still like the current way the content is organized, I think it could be broken down more. Specifically, it would be nice if it was then organized by date and time. It would also make sense to add all other video clips and screen shots.

In order to complete this project, I will have to go through all of my DVDs, noting when every piece of content aired. Since I probably have well over 100 DVDs, this will be a work in progress that will likely take several months.

As many of you know, this summer marked the 15th anniversary of this site. TWC Classics was born "Matt's TWC Music Homepage" around July, 1997. Like many sites in the late 90s, the design was basic and used bad clip art. The content consisted of music playlists and two pages that talked about the flavors. Hosting was with Geocities, and later Tripod.

The following year, I purchased a domain name and created a new site. I called it "TWC Fan." The content was expanded to include more programming aspects, a studio tour, as well as some screenshots of the local forecast. I also sold CDs and tapes for a few independent artists that had been featured on TWC. During this time, the website got a spike in traffic thanks to a brief mention in an article in the Washington Post.

A few years later, 2002 to be exact, I changed the name and design again. I called it "TWC Classics," after the cable channels created by VH1 and ESPN. I later realized that the channels were called "classic," not "classics." Oh well. I had aspirations to expand the content even further, but wasn't able to until the following year. Which, you guessed it, brought a new name and design.

This go around it was "Matt's Guide To The Weather Channel." I added more audio, images, and video. I also added information about the OCMs, as well as how to order Trammell Starks' CDs. Our first first message board was also born this year. Unfortunately, it didn't last long.

The following year (2004), I decided that TWC Classics was the better name and switched back. During this time, I started corresponding with a guy from Minneapolis named Charles. Inspired by my site and his own footage, he created his own site.

After a few months, he asked if I wanted to combine forces. Let's see, two guys with their own ideas and tendencies to be very stubborn working together. What could possibly go wrong? Actually, as far as partnerships go, this one went pretty smoothly. We had problems every now and then, but overall it was a blast! By far the best years, for me, running this site.

Okay, so we're going to create a combined site. We'll need a new design. I'm partial to my 2002 design, but you're the artistic one Charles, so whatcha got? Hmm...let's see...

Too sunny	Too moony
Too black	Too blue
Too gray	If I say I like this, will you stop choking me?

Some other designs during our time together:

We decided to try the message board thing again. This one was more successful, lasting about 5 years.

Of course we had some fun along the way...

Charles does the weather

We also said goodbye to the WeatherSTAR 3000.

Being in charge of the new "video" section, Charles used his skills to create some cool emulated local and travel forecasts. He also gave birth to the double and triple takes, which combined two or three similar local forecasts into one video. Here are some of those creations.

Of course, we couldn't have done it without our wonderful contributors. Thank you to everyone that has made TWC Classics a success!

A few months ago, I made a post about organizing the timeline section better. Since then, I've been doing a lot of research and have decided to redo the entire site. Why? Simple. I want to attract more visitors by expanding!

I plan to expand content on three major fronts. First, in hopes of attracting younger TWC fans, I will be adding more content from the late 90s to mid 2000s.

Second, in an attempt to attract weather fans, I will be adding more footage of memorable storms. And not just the ones with names! Local events too. I also plan to add educational content for those wanting to learn more about the science of weather.

Third, I plan to add more text to the video clips and images. Specifically, I'll be adding some historical perspective and personal commentary. And speaking of video and images, I will also be implementing a tagging system.

If you run or frequently visit a traditional blog, you're probably familiar with the concept. If you don't, "tagging" allows you to group content by topic.

Let's say you wanted to view every video clip or image with Dave Schwartz in it. Or maybe you wanted to see if there were any new Trammell Starks clips. Instead of doing a search each time (where you might not get everything), you would just bookmark the page for that tag.

I will be working on this new site behind the scenes. I'm not sure when it will be ready for public viewing, but I'm guessing sometime early next year. Stay tuned for more updates!

In case you haven't noticed already, I made some additions and changes to the blog on the 15th. The first thing you'll notice is that the front page now lists all the posts, starting with the most recent. The second change is that I have replaced the generic "images" and "video" categories with some more descriptive ones. Any previous post you might have bookmarked should redirect to its new url.

As we move to the category pages, one change you may notice is that the thumbnail images are a little bigger. I think this size gives you a much better look at what the full size image or video is. Moving on to the posts themselves, you'll notice several changes. First, there are links to the post before and after it (when available). There are also buttons for you to share that post with others on the most popular social networks. Finally, you now have the option of commenting on a post (near the bottom). You don't need to sign up for an account, though. You can either submit your name and email address or login using Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus.

The last item(s) of note are the tags I have added to some of the posts. As with most blogs, this enables you to find posts with a similar topic without having to use the search feature. As with any major change or addition to the site, please let me know if you have any questions or run into any problems.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have plans to change the navigation/structure of the site. A few regular visitors have voiced opposition to this. Rather than make the changes and assume that most will like them, I thought I'd put a poll up to see if others agreed.

To expand a little further on my previous post, the "new" structure will be very similar to the previous one. If you visited this site a year ago, you may remember it being organized by media type (ie. video, images, etc). My plans are to go back to that, as I feel it's the best way to organize things. But I'd like to know what you think. The poll will be open for a week and you can only vote once. Thanks for your input!

Update 1/16/13: The poll is now closed.

I apologize for the lack of updates on the site. I am currently holding off any content updates for the relaunch. Since I've been (thankfully) very busy at work over the last few months, I haven't had much free time to work on the relaunch. I'm almost done with the planning stage, and hope to start working on the site in the next week or so. In the meantime, I wanted to share some exciting news! In case you didn't notice, we reached 400 fans on our Facebook page! Thanks to everyone who has "liked" us! I appreciate your support.

Today might be the greatest day of my life in terms of Weather Channel nostalgia! As much as I love Shazam (the smart phone app that can identify most songs by listening to them), I've never had much luck finding unknown Weather Channel songs with it. One song in particular, I've played for it several times with no luck. I did it again just now, thinking it would come up with nothing again. But no! It gave me a title and artist. Still, I figured it was wrong. So I looked it up on allmusic.com and about s*** my pants! It was right!!!

The unknown "known" as "unksaxy" on my Name That Tune page from 1990 has FINALLY been identified!! It's called "Potion" (I figured it had name like that) and is by an obscure jazz group called Moon August. According to allmusic.com, they only released one album in 1989 on a label I've never heard of. The only disappointing part is that "Potion" appears to be the only song TWC used, but I'm pretty stoked nonetheless! I've been searching for this song for nearly 15 years!

As you have likely noticed, the "new" TWC Classics is live! Well, I guess you could call it the "old" TWC Classics. The structure/navigation and design is similar to the way things were a few years ago. In other words, content is again organized by media type. So there's a section devoted to video, one for images, and so on.

As with previous site changes, I have done my best to make sure that everything is working properly. Naturally, there is a chance that I missed something. If you see anything that doesn't look or work right, please let me know. Since I gave myself a deadline of today (August 1st), I wasn't able to get everything I wanted done. So I will be working on those non-critical elements in the coming days. One of which is adding some new video clips and images.

Speaking of new content, I did find the time to add a bunch of new playlists. Mainly Christmas ones from the late 80s and some from the early 2000s. So you can see those now. I hope you will find these changes and the design to be for the better!

Updated August 2, 2013

• Holly Suite
• Puer Nobis
• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

• Unknown11 - H is "You're The One" by Henry Johnson
• Unknown24 - E is "White Castles" by Teemujazz

Wow, this has got to be some kind of record! In the last three days, I have been able to solve the mystery of not one, but FOUR songs on my Name That Tune page! On Monday, I received an email from Gary, who gave me the tip about song #1. He mentioned that he had used a program to identify it. Having played the same song for Shazam several times, I was curious what program he was using.

He told me in an email today that it was called Audiggle. So I downloaded it, and it was able to identify three more songs! This is awesome because with the exception of the fourth one, I have been trying to identify these songs for many years.

If you're interested in the program, there are a few things you should probably know. One is that you need to create an account to use it, but it's free. The second thing is that there is a limit to the free account. The website says five songs, but I was able to play a lot more than that. If you want to continue using it, you'll need to get a paid account.

• 061791 is "Sunset Breeze" by Bill Shields, and was a 60 second and 3 minute LF song in the final "Prime Time Tonight" playlist.
• Unknown16 is "The Apple Bites Back" by Group 87, and was used as a LF, BTF, and station ID song!
• unk o come o come emmanuel is "Emmanual" by E.T.A., and was a LF song.
• Unknown23 - H is "Would You Like To" by Michael Pedicin, Jr., and was a LF song.

• "I'll Be Home For Christmas" by Jackie Gleason (1986)
• "Sleigh Ride" by Ferrante and Teicher (1986)
• "Angels We Have Heard On High" by The Canadian Brass (1987)
• "Greensleeves" by Liz Story (1988)
• "I Saw Three Ships" by Mannheim Steamroller (1988)
• "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" by Tingstad & Rumbel (1990)
• "O Holy Night" by John Nilsen (1991)
• "Good King Wenceslas" by Kurt Bestor (1992)
• "O Holy Night" by Lanz & Speer (1993)
• "I Saw Three Ships" by David Arkenston (1993)
• "We Three Kings" by David Arkenstone (1993)
• "Away In A Manger" by Kenny G (1994)
• "Good King Wenceslas" by Ficara (1998)
• "Ice Fairies" by Michael Colone (1999)

• Riding a train and mobbing Santa (1987)
• Holiday staff roster (1987)
• Gingerbread House (1989)
• Decorating the tree (1989)
• Christmas cookie (1991)
• Children dreaming (1992)

Update: I created a poll about which design should stay. If you haven't already, please answer it. Thanks!

After my hosting company experienced their second network crash in less than eight months, I started thinking about switching companies...again. I switched last May after experiencing a series of database issues. It became obvious that my hosting company had no interest in fixing the problem (I got the typical, "everything is fine on our end" response). So I decided it was time for a change (I had been with them for over 10 years). It seems that I might have made the wrong decision now, but I'm willing to give the "new" host another chance. At least they own up to their problems.

While having hundreds of files may make for hours of entertainment for you, it makes moving really time-consuming for me. So I started thinking of ways to make the next possible hosting move as quick as possible. The two solutions I came up with are to use the CloudFlare service and move most files to other sites. CloudFare apparently saves all of the files on your site and loads them if your server ever goes down. We'll see.

In the coming weeks, I will be adding all non local forecast video clips to YouTube, all screenshots to Facebook, and all site files to the Amazon Cloud. Not only will this make a possible move easier, it will also allow me to cut down on file space and bandwidth usage. Obviously the idea of having to move over a thousand or more files over to YouTube and Facebook is a bit overwhelming, even if it's just one time. So I'll be trimming things down, and only posting what I feel are the best files. Don't worry though, you won't see any changes for at least a month.

Additionally, I've made two decisions regarding content. First, I've decided to stop adding a watermark image to video clips and screenshots. They kind of get in the way, take time to add, and people stealing my videos was never really that big of a problem. It was only a few people. Mainly kids with psychological issues. Why spoil the fun for everyone because of a few bad apples?

The second decision involves moving the most popular areas up front (ie. in the navigation bar), putting the less popular areas in the sidebar, and getting rid of areas with little or no interest. Over the last few years, I've periodically reviewed the site's Google Analytics. One thing that has surprised me is that certain areas of the site - no matter where I put them - are always at the top of the list in terms of page views. The two most popular areas being local forecast videos and playlists. So it makes sense to put these (and others) in an area where you can't miss them. Here's the list (which may change), if you're curious.

• Local Forecasts
• Playlists
• Events (now called "Storms")
• Name That Tune
• Contact
• Updates

• Avatars & Fonts (now called "Downloads", all three pages will be merged into one)
• Contact An Artist
• Flavor Guide
• OCMs
• On-Air Graphics
• Programming (ie. intros and segments)
• Promos
• Weather 101 (a new section, which will feature "Weather Classroom" video clips and screenshots)

You may have noticed that the blog and the rest of the site have two different designs. While I'm moving files over to YouTube and Facebook, I thought I'd make things more uniform. So I was wondering which design you liked best. Since I've had issues with polls on the blog, I created this one on Survey Monkey. If you haven't taken the poll yet, please do. It's only one question. Thanks!

Well it turns out that moving videos to YouTube won't work. Because YouTube changes the file name after you upload it, I need to match up the YouTube id with my own file name in a database. This is possible by using one of their RSS feeds, but it's very slow and difficult to use if you have lots of videos.

I then tried to use Google Drive (because it also converts video clips to flash). While easier to organize, matching up file names and ID numbers is even more difficult and slow. Additionally, uploading files is VERY slow. It would potentially take months to upload everything I want. No thank you!

Which leaves the Amazon cloud as the only cheap option for storing files off-site. I don't foresee any problems with this option, but who knows. Since Amazon's storage system doesn't convert video clips to flash, I'm going to convert all videos to mp4. That way they can still play on the site (like they do now), but you can also download and play them in most video players.

In addition to storing most files off-site, I've decided to move this blog off-site. That way if the site goes down again, at least the blog will still be up, and I can let you know what's going on (in case you're not on Facebook). Assuming there aren't anymore setbacks, I hope to have everything done by the end of April.

If you're a Facebook user, you may have noticed that posts from pages you've "liked" have almost completely disappeared. I thought it was just me, but it turns out that Facebook has changed the way your news feed works. Since there doesn't appear to be a way for me or you to change this, I'm thinking about posting future updates on a different platform.

With that in mind, I'd like to get your thoughts. If you prefer to get site updates from somewhere other than here (or in addition to), let me know your preference by taking this survey. Thanks!

In case you haven't heard, The Weather Channel is apparently discontinuing all of their legacy WeatherSTAR units later this month. This includes the XL, Jr., and my favorite - the 4000. Since The Weather Channel hasn't notified the press (as far as I know), I would have to classify this as a rumor. However, based on conversations I've had with certain people, it seems to be legit. You can read more about it on our message board.

Also happening later this month, I will be changing hosting companies. My contract with my current host ends around Memorial Day, and I've decided not to renew. On at least three separate occasions, they have experienced site-wide network outages that have caused sites to be down for hours. And some for a day or more. I find this completely unacceptable, so I'm taking my business elsewhere.

The down side to the move is that there is a disk space limit, which is quite a bit less than what I'm currently using. That means that I will have to go through the site and remove many video and audio files. So if you have any favorite clips on the site, now is the time to download them, if you haven't already!

Yesterday evening, I moved the site to a new hosting company. The one I was with for the last year had proven to be rather unreliable. They had several company-wide outages that resulted in significant downtime. Although they were cheap, I really got tired of the excuses. Whenever you move a site, there are bound to be a few problems at first. And this move was no exception. From last evening, until about 3:30pm (CT) today, I did not have email service. If you emailed me directly, you probably got an error. If you used the contact form, you probably did not get an error (for some reason, PHP does not return an error when it can't send an email). So if you tried to send me a message during that time, please try again. Thanks!

In other news, two people identified two unknown songs. 85_01_Unknown is "La Luz" by Wilton Felder and Killing Me Softly is "Killing Me Softly With His Song" by Tim Weisberg. Thanks Matt and James!

I don't know about you, but I've become rather frustrated with most weather sites. It seems like they're so desperate to pad their visitor counts that they're willing to put non-weather posts like "30 abandoned train stations" and sensational reporting above giving us weather geeks (which should be their core audience) what we want.

Since I have the knowledge and tools, I've decided to create my own website for weather geeks. Originally, my thought was to have something completely separate from TWCC, but the more I've thought about it, the more sense it makes to just incorporate my idea into what's already here.

I assume that most of you who are fans of the old Weather Channel are also weather fans, but I'd like to gauge the interest level nonetheless. So please take the quick, one question survey below, to let me know your thoughts. If you'd like to expand on your vote, you can contact me directly. Thanks!