Weather is the condition of the atmosphere at a particular place and a particular time. It can be a combination of different amounts of heat, moisture and dry movement in the air. Weather forecaster (Meteorologist are the professionally trained weathermen) studies the weather by looking at the "fronts" that exist, fronts are boundary lines between the cold air moving southwards from the north, and the warm air moving from the tropics. Most of the severe weather conditions are in some way related to these fronts. There have been an attempt to modify certain weather conditions using the technique called cloud seeding, this will either increase the amount of rainfall or the stop the formation of hail by dispersing substances (silver iodide and dry ice) into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, but this effort's result have only very limited success.

Most weather changes occur in the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere nearest the earth. The troposphere varies in thickness from 60,000 feet at the equator to as little as 23,000 feet or less over polar areas.

Factors that affect the weather condition: temperature, pressure, moisture content, speed and direction in which its moves.

• One factor is that the sun does not heat all parts of the earth equally; the resulting difference in density and pressure causes the air to move from different places.
• Another factor is the different physical features (mountains, plains, bodies of water) have different effects on the atmosphere.
• The season and the time of day also affect the state of the atmosphere.
• The gravitational pull of the moon, which varies with its position.

Elements of Weather:

Temperature. Temperatures vary greatly throughout the world this is because of the unequal amount of heat received from the sun on the earth's surface and because of the movements of air in currents caused by this unequal heating. Areas near the equator receive the largest amount of heat annually and Polar Regions the least. Temperature is also determined by cloud cove, winds, altitude, season, time of day, and the heating or cooling influences of large land masses, lakes, and oceans.

Pressure is another weather element that usually cannot be felt but must be measured with an instrument. Pressure varies on the earth's surface because of the varying weight of the atmosphere, caused mainly by the atmosphere's almost constant movement. Changes in the heating and cooling of land and water masses can cause air pressure to change, this changes in air pressure create winds, since air tends to move in a deflected path from an area of high pressure to one of low pressure. Low pressure areas have less atmospheric mass above their location, where as high pressure areas have more atmospheric mass about their location. Pressure decreases rapidly with altitude.

Moisture. Humidity is the measure of the water vapor content in the air, combined with the temperature, it causes many weather conditions. The amount of vapor in a given volume of air at a given time is called the absolute humidity. While relative humidity is the amount of water vapor that exists in a gaseous mixture of air and water, hot and cold weather are more comfortable when the relative humidity is low. Clouds are formed when water vapor condenses high above the ground. When cloud droplets grow larger and become too heavy to be held up by the air currents, they fall to the ground in a form of rain. If the raindrops fall through a layer of air which is below freezing, the drops freeze and fall in a form of snow.

Precipitation is the primary mechanism for transporting water from the atmosphere to the surface of the earth. There are different forms of precipitations these include; dew and fog, it occurs when moisture in air just above the ground changes from vapor to liquid. Rain, snow, and hail occur as the result of the cooling of a mass of warm, moist air, cooling occurs when air rises. As it rises, the air expands, because atmospheric pressure is less at higher attitudes. Expansion in turn, causes the rising air to become cooler.

How Precipitation is measured:

• Rain is measured in inches or millimeters in a rain gauge.
• Snow can be measured in two ways as snow, with an ordinary ruler; or as water, by being melted in a rain gauge. It normally takes about 10 inches of snow to produce 1 inch of water, but this figure can vary greatly.
• Sleet and hail must be melted first to be measured.
• Dew and fog ordinarily do not add enough water to the earth to be measured.