The state of the atmosphere, as determined by the simultaneous occurrence of several meteorological phenomena at a geographical locality or over broad areas of the Earth. When such a collection of weather elements is part of an interrelated physical structure of the atmosphere, it is termed a weather system, and includes phenomena at all elevations above the ground. More popularly, weather refers to a certain state of the atmosphere as it affects humans' activities on the Earth's surface. In this sense, it is often taken to include such related phenomena as waves at sea and floods on land.

A weather element is any individual physical feature of the atmosphere. At a given locality, at least seven such elements may be observed at any one time. These are clouds, precipitation, temperature, humidity, wind, pressure, and visibility. Each of these principal elements is divided into many subtypes. See also Weather map.

The various forms of precipitation are included by international agreement among the hydrometeors, which comprise all the visible features in the atmosphere, besides clouds, that are due to water in its various forms. For convenience in processing weather data and information, this definition is made to include some phenomena not due to water, such as dust and smoke. Some of the more common hydrometeors include rain, snow, fog, hail, dew, and frost. See also Precipitation (meteorology).

Certain optical and electrical phenomena have long been observed among the weather elements. These include lightning, aurora, solar or lunar corona, and halo. See also Air mass; Atmosphere; Aurora; Cloud; Front; Lightning; Meteorology; Storm; Weather observations; Wind.

verbTo exist in spite of adversity: come through, last2, persist, pull through, ride out, survive. See live/die. Idioms:weatherTopHome > Library > Literature & Language > Idioms Idioms beginning with weather:weather the stormIn addition to the idiom beginning with weather, also see fair-weather friend; heavy going (weather); keep a weather eye out; under the weather. Antonyms:weatherTopHome > Library > Literature & Language > Antonyms vDefinition: endureAntonyms: refuse, reject US Military Dictionary:weatherTopHome > Library > History, Politics & Society > US Military Dictionary n. denoting the side from which the wind is blowing, especially on board a ship; windward: the weather side of the yacht. Contrasted with) lee.

1. come safely through (a storm).

2. (of a ship) get to the windward of (a cape or other obstacle).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Current, rather than average, atmospheric conditions; the object of study of synoptic meteorology. Weather variables include humidity, temperature, sunshine hours, cloud cover, visibility, and precipitation (fog, rain, snow, sleet, and frost).

Lore about the weather consisted mainly of practical information and advice, based on observation of nature, and transmitted orally. Such expertise was essential to farmers and seafarers. For the literate, there were also other channels of transmission, notably almanacs, which gave guidance on the right date for sowing this or that crop, beginning hay-making, and so on. Some scraps of this lore are still remembered: that rooks, gulls, or swifts flying high are a sign of fine weather, or that a good crop of berries foretells a hard winter (which is probably not true). A few rhymed tags are well known:Red at night,Shepherd's delight;Red in the morning,Shepherd's warning.Alluding to high wispy clouds:See in the sky the painter's brush,The wind around you soon will rush.For January weather:As the day lengthens,So the cold strengthens.A rhyme found in many places uses the way low cloud hides hilltops as a sign of rain, naming whichever hill is nearest:When—wears a cap,We in the valley gets a drop.In some cases, weather lore is parodied in jokes which have themselves become traditional: ‘If you can see X from Y, there will be rain soon; if you can't see X from Y, it's raining already.’Less rational ways of forecasting included the idea that rain on St Swithin's Day will continue for 40 days, and that the weather on each of the twelve days of Christmas shows what to expect for each month of the coming year. An unusual and dramatic form of weather divination was practised at Adderbury (Oxfordshire) in the latter part of the 19th century; men would go out to the fields towards eleven o'clock on Martinmas Eve (10 November) and keep vigil till midnight, listening to the wind, for they believed that ‘the four Angels of the Earth’ were flying round and round, stirring up the winds. At midnight this ceased, and the watchers noted which way the wind was then blowing, for that would be its prevailing direction for the next three months (Michael Pickering, Folklore 94 (1983), 252). In Derbyshire, people would take a candle to the bottom of the garden on Halloween to see which way the wind blew, for it would remain in that quarter for three months (Addy, 1895: 118).Notable storms could be seen as omens accompanying a great man's death, or as signs either of the wrath of God or of the activity of the Devil. Witches were believed capable of ‘selling’ winds to sailors in the form of knot-ted cords, and of malicious storm-raising; the penalty of various unlucky actions, notably whistling and drowning a cat at sea, is that they cause fierce winds.See also STORMS, THUNDER.