Why do my frame rates get really really bad just at the moment when clouds are being drawn in the distance, but after that they are as smooth as silk again?

MikeWx and AI trfc suck a lot of 'energy' out of the normal puter. They are real bears and if u take steps to minize both it just may help ur machines performance. U can always display simple clouds instead of complex and change the redraw parameters for ur weather to gain a little performance back from ur machine. The fps difference between simple and complex clouds on my machine is significant. JoeT