The following article by Chris Tribble discusses the uses of words associated with weather in the (Manchester) Guardian Weekly.

Making heavy weather

If you live in the Caribbean or around the Gulf of Mexico, the hurricane season probably dominates yournews agenda. If you're British, then its likely to be the dreadful summer just experienced in the UK. From Bihar to Melbourne, the weather is in the news.

The top weather word in the Guardian Weekly's archive is wind (1,926); with rain (1,755), weather (1,390), storm (1,253) and snow coming close behind. Cloud (677), hurricane (473), fog (270), breeze (266) and frost (259) come next, with the other extreme weather events, cyclone (162) and tornado (100) some way behind.

So, lots of weather words, but do they really tell us what is happening meteorologically?

Maybe not. Wind is most strongly associated with turbines, farms, power and solar. Likewise, storm is lnked with the cliche perfect storm (serious crisis), Operation Desert Storm (the 1990 Gulf war), and clouds, gathering and politival, all of which most frequently describe events, rather than the weather.

Surely rain has to do with the weather? Yes, but not uniquely so. Although rain co-occurs most frequently with heavy and torrential, it is also closely associated with rain forest, acid rain and rain water.

Looking further down the top 10, we find that snow and frost are most frequently linked with the names of media or political personalities. Other references are mainly concerned with landscapes, such as snow-covered mountain tops.

Similarly, in news writing cloud is most strongly associated with dust and the mushroom cloud of nuclear explosion, not the weather.

Breeze is more weather related (sea, stiff, strong, light), as are hurricane, cyclone and tornado. In fact it seems to be these last wrods that really bring weather and news together. Hurricanes and cyclones have struck or devastated areas from the Caribbean, Florida and New Orleans to Bangladesh and Burma, leaving damage and disaster in their wake.

Although there are lots of weather words, it requires an extreme event to get the weather at the top of the world's news agenda.