Wes Lyons, Author at TalkWeather Blog

January 9, 2023 Wes Lyons

How Thunderstorms Form

Thunderstorms are powerful meteorological events characterized by lightning, thunder, strong winds, and heavy rain. These storms can occur almost anywhere in the world but are most common in the late spring and summer months. So, how do thunderstorms form? Thunderstorms form when warm, moist air rises into the atmosphere and cools, leading to the formation of cumulonimbus clouds. This process, known as convection, occurs when the sun warms the Earth’s surface, causing the air near the surface to become warm and less dense. As the warm air rises, it cools, and the moisture in the air condenses into visible clouds.

January 8, 2023 Wes Lyons

Cumulonimbus clouds

Cumulonimbus clouds are large, towering clouds that can reach heights of over 10 miles (16 kilometers). These clouds are often referred to as thunderclouds because they are often accompanied by thunder and lightning. Cumulonimbus clouds are also responsible for producing heavy rain and sometimes even hail. But how do cumulonimbus clouds form? Cumulonimbus clouds form when warm, moist air rises quickly through the atmosphere. As the air rises, it cools, and the moisture condenses into visible clouds. This process is known as convection.For cumulonimbus clouds to form, there must be a sufficient amount of moisture in the air and a

January 7, 2023 Wes Lyons

Understanding Tornado Watches, Warnings and Emergencies

Tornadoes are some of the most powerful and destructive natural disasters that can occur, and it is important for people to understand the difference between a Tornado Watch, a Tornado Warning, and a Tornado Emergency. These alerts are issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) to alert the public to the possibility of tornadoes in their area and to provide guidance on how to stay safe. Understanding the difference between these alerts can help people stay prepared and make informed decisions in the event of a tornado. A Tornado Watch is issued by the NWS when conditions are favorable for

July 3, 2021 Wes Lyons

TalkWeather Forum Upgrades (July 3, 2021)

Welcome TalkWeather members! At this time TalkWeather forum is undergoing a backend upgrade to a new system archtecture that will help improve the responisveness of the site, especially during severe weather events. It will also help us plan to grow with additional resources for members expected to be added later this year. However, in order to make this transition the database and applications servers will be down for around an hour on the afternoon of July 3, 2021. Updates will be posted to this page as progress is made. If you have any questions or concerns, e-mail us at info@talkweather.com.

March 24, 2020 Wes Lyons

Unscheduled TalkWeather Forum Outage 24MAR20

Update – The site is back online. We apologize for the brief outage. We are currently working on an issue with our hosting provider. We understand this is a horrible time to have an outage and we should have the issue resolved before 5:00pm central time.

March 4, 2020 Wes Lyons

TalkWeather Forum Maintenance – March 7, 2020

Updated March 7, 2020 – Upgrade Complete Starting on March 7, 2020 at 10:00pm central time, the TalkWeather forums will be down for up to one hour for a database upgrade. This scheduled maintenance was originally scheduled for March 6th but had to be rescheduled. During this time the forums will be unavailable. Updates on the status of the upgrade will be added to this blog post as they happen. This upgrade will allow us to have better performance during severe weather events. Since the re-launch of TalkWeather, we have only had one major downtime event (more than 30 minutes

April 17, 2019 Wes Lyons

“Offloading Apps” could be preventing you from getting severe weather warnings

If you are anything like me, you depend on your phone as one of your three methods to get severe weather information. However, a recently new feature with Apple’s iPhone could be preventing you from getting life saving information from the apps you trust. During the recent round of severe weather, I noticed that one of my go-to apps was not alerting me when watches and warnings were issued for my area. After a little investigation, I found that I had turned on the iPhone’s “Offload Apps” feature a few weeks ago when I was running low on storage space.

April 10, 2019 Wes Lyons

Forum Upgrades – April 9, 2019

** Update – 12:30AM – All updates have been loaded and we are back to normal operations. ** Update – 12:08AM – One of our updates took a bit longer than expected to transfer. Board is now officially off-line for updates. Should be back online at 12:35AM. ~Wes Greetings TalkWeather nation, As we are preparing for several rounds of severe weather across the country, especially the southeast, we will be performing a few upgrades on the forum software and servers. This upgrade will ensure our forum software is at the most current version and also will provide a faster load

January 22, 2019 Wes Lyons

TalkWeather Forum Maintenance – Nov 06, 2019

TalkWeather forums are currently undergoing quarterly maintenance and database upgrade. Forums should be back online around 10:00pm (central).

September 10, 2018 Wes Lyons

Using Amazon Prime to Prepare for Hurricane Florence

Be sure to follow the progress of Hurricane Florence at TalkWeather.com . Our dedicated members of weather enthusiasts and metrologists provide updates and tracking information as the hurricane approaches the United States. As residents of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia are bracing for the impact of category 4 Hurricane Florence later this week, some are finding that store shelves are already becoming barren of essential items. The fact that this storm was so quickly identified and tracked means that people are taking the warnings seriously and are already preparing for the damaging wind and possible flooding that can occur with a storm