Follow TV Tropes

Following

Hostile Weather

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/angry-sky_362.jpg
When stormclouds attack.

"Oh, a good villain's a good villain, and a good villain has their purpose and point, but there's also something to be said about the environmental threat. Not only is it more terrifying because of how, frankly, more existential it is. Watching a volcano go off right in front of you, for example, or a hurricane that's on approach—there's just a terror to that, right? But more to the point, it also helps sell the film in a way that doesn't require evil. Because there's no evil behind a volcano, no evil behind a hurricane; it's just something that is. It's actually more Lovecraftian in its own way because it doesn't know you exist, and it doesn't care."
Lorerunner, Rumination Analysis on A Bug's Life

This is a trope for when the characters are explicitly beset by hostile, driving rain, tornadoes, dust storms, or other oppressively inconvenient weather, which only lets up at sudden, inconvenient increments, often to indicate they are in a Hungry Jungle or other hostile environment. The characters will spend their time asking "when will this ever let up?" When it does let up, it will start back up again the minute they comment on it. Related to When It Rains, It Pours.

Even mentioning it is Tempting Fate. If the mission depends on Phlebotinum, transportation, or an easily-damaged MacGuffin, weather of this sort will ruin whatever conditions are needed for the original objective. They may sometimes be artificially made. Also useful for preventing rescues; compare Snowed-In.

Deadly Dust Storm and Winter of Starvation are Sub-Tropes. Contrast Empathic Environment tropes, where the weather merely sets the mood rather than actually influencing events. Compare Weather of War, Caught in the Rain, and Genius Loci. The opposite of Weather Saves the Day. Not to be confused with Cumulonemesis, which is about actively hostile, animate weather.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Japan Sinks: As if the massive earthquake that kicks off the series isn't bad enough, radiation leaking from a nuclear power plant mixes with the rain at one point, causing a toxic storm. Fortunately, Ayumu and her companions are in a good shelter at the time, protecting them from the irradiated water.
  • Monster Rancher:
    • Genki and the other Searchers first meet Golem when they're forced to take shelter in some seemingly abandoned ruins during "Guardian of the Discs". While initially terrified, they soon realize that Golem isn't nearly as terrifying as the rumors surrounding him suggest.
    • "Melcarba" opens with the Searchers being caught in a vicious downpour. After the giant tree they're sheltering in is split apart by lightning, they find an ancient factory and unintentionally activate the titular juggernaut. The storm also plays a key role in the climax, as an improvised lightning rod takes Melcarba down.
    • In "Tiger Meets His Match", Tiger gets separated from the others when he follows Jagd Hound up a cliffside, and they're forced to suspend their search due to the heavy rain.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Both movies (Pokémon: The First Movie and Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns) that involve Mewtwo have him create a storm around the island he's living on. The first time to make sure only the strongest trainers that he invited make it to the island, and the second time so that people will just leave him and his fellow clones alone. The first one works (almost too well in fact, since Ash and friends almost drown) but the second storm is breached by both Giovanni and the main characters.
    • Pokémon 2000 centers around the elemental fallout from Lawrence III capturing the Legendary Birds as part of his scheme to draw out and capture Lugia.
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Walpurgisnacht is the only Witch known not to have a Labyrinth, and instead appears in an unusually intense supercell thunderstorm.
  • Played for Laughs in Ranma ½, with the rain activating the character's various water based curses precisely when it is most inconvenient and stopping almost immediately afterward.

    Card Games 

    Comic Books 
  • Sin City is located in a desert but when it rains, it comes down in a torrent, drowning out the background. This serves as a plot point when it becomes difficult for Dwight McCarthy to dispose of some bodies in a tar pit.

    Fan Works 
  • All I See: Nate got into a near-fatal car accident during a massive storm, stated to be one of the worst Los Angeles had seen in years. While the police saw this as a natural explanation for said accident, this didn't stop the media from wildly speculating about it.
  • All I've Ever Learned From Love: In an effort to prevent Emma, Mary Margaret and Hook from returning to Storybrooke, Cora uses the Magic Mirror to gather up all the wind of a single day and release it all at once. This successfully blocks Emma from making it back.
  • Dekugate: While visiting Nabu Island, a typhoon suddenly sweeps in, forcing everyone to take shelter. Izuku grows increasingly distressed over his mother helping with the evacuation efforts, having recently discovered the titular online community and how much it despises him and Inko for existing. His fears about Inko potentially being endangered and how the Dekugaters would celebrate her death drive him to venture out into the storm.
  • In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, the great conqueror General Tacticus explcitly refused battle with Far Uberwald, citing this as his reason and pointing out the only fighting he was prepared to do in winter involved a gentle exchange of snowballs and a retreat to a warm well-heated room afterwards with hot drinks available. For this reason the Rodinian country remained unfought and untroubled by the Ankh-Morporkian Empire and Tacticus took care to remain on the best possible terms with the Tsars.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami features this as a facet of the corruption effects of dungeon hearts. The effects vary from one keeper to another; for Mercury, her water and ice affinity creates a nearly constant storm of sleet and rain, another keeper, Zarekos, a vampire, creates a thick cloudcover like perpetual night. Sometimes an inventive keeper can even utilize the corruption effect to their advantage.
  • Discussed in Friendly Foreign Exchange Student Spider Man. Aizawa considers natural disasters to be a far greater challenge than any villain can pose, as they're powerful, unpredictable, and impact large areas at once.
  • A Game of Portals: When Aang and his companions first arrive in Vale, they find themselves caught in a gigantic storm and struggle to find shelter in the unfamiliar region.
  • Chroma generates these in The Rainsverse, as a kind of side effect to her powers.
  • Thanks to Lapis trying to delay Jasper reaching Steven's home in Chapter Forty of A Triangle in the Stars, the already-ensuing storm becomes much, much worse, bringing Jasper's ship down and in Chapter Forty-One threatening to tip over the Stan O' War II. Because of this, Stan, Peridot and Ford have to wait just outside the perimeter of the deadly waves and rain until the storm clears up before they can head on to Beach City.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The weather in Aliens and Alien³ is permanently extreme, although it mostly serves to set the mood.
  • The blizzard in Alive manages to come along just in time to kill as many passengers as starvation and cold, although this could again be chalked up to inexperienced rugby players deciding to wait out the winter. Then an avalanche! makes a beeline for the open end of the plane, wiping out most of the passengers.
    • Truth in Television. The passengers did have these things happen to them in the real life event this movie covers.
  • Die Hard 2 depends on this trope for its plot to function.
  • In Flash Gordon, alien emperor Ming the Merciless has a series of buttons entitled "Hurricane", "Tornado" and "Hot Hail". There's also one that says "Earth Quake", strangely enough.
    Ming: I like to play with them awhile... before annihilation. HA HA HA HA!
  • Hard Rain, where bank robbers are tracked amidst a heavy torrent and flood.
  • The Dutch movie De hel van '63 is based on this trope—as well as Based on a True Story. Four ice skaters try to complete the Elfstedentocht, which is 200 km (124 miles) across the ice in -18˚C (0˚F) weather, snowstorms and an icy northeastern wind. The weather conditions are occasionally depicted as monstrous wolves that hunt people and knock them down.
  • In Key Largo, a hurricane keeps the characters trapped in one location for the entire movie.
  • A plot device in the film I Know Where I'm Going!: a gale stops Joan Webster from being able to crossover to the Island of Kiloran, delaying her marriage to a rich man. Romantic shenanigans ensue.
  • From the film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, just as the battle of Helms Deep is about to begin, it begins pouring rain. One of the soldiers glances up at the rain as if to ask "Are you kidding me?"
  • The long eclipse in Pitch Black certainly picks a good time to strike, although that could be chalked up to bickering, procrastinating crew members. Then the rain starts and douses their lights. The rain also doubles as an ironic punch in the gut for the characters. In the first part of the movie, they were scrounging around trying to find water because of the brutally hot sunlight on the desert planet. When the rain finally comes it serves only to make them even more vulnerable to their enemies. Could be justified, as the eclipse probably dropped the ambient temperature low enough for atmospheric water vapor to consense for the first time in years.
  • Trouble the Water is a documentary about Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. A young woman named Kimberly Roberts stayed in her home, because she had no transportation out of the city. But she did have a second-hand video camera, which she used to record the terrifying ordeal as the winds and rain cause the levees to rupture, flooding the city. Kimberly and her family are left trapped in their attic until her brother wades through chest-deep water to rescue them.
  • Twister, being a disaster movie about tornadoes, has this trope in spades. It doesn't get much more hostile than the weather whipping an 18-wheeler at your face.
  • In Whiteout, an imminent storm forces base command to move up the shutdown of the base by three days. Circumstances force Carrie, Pryce, Delfy and Doc to miss the last plane out, meaning they will be stuck in the base for 6 months. Then the final confrontation with the killer takes place outside during gale force winds and whiteout conditions.

    Literature 
  • The Brightest Shadow: The Chorhan Expanse has dry/rainy seasons, and the long rains directly correlate with one of the lowest points in the first book.
  • The typhoon on Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny. In the Real Life, the Typhoon Cobra or "Halsey's Typhoon", cost US Navy 790 men, three ships (all destroyers, which capsized) and 146 airplanes. Nine ships, including one light cruiser, three light carriers, and two escort carriers suffered enough damage to be sent for repairs.
  • In Codex Alera any sort of large natural phenomenon (such as volcanos, mountains or storms) has a physical manifestation called a fury. That picture up there actually happens near the end of the series. A furystorm is tearing apart the battlefield with claws of lightning and the Big Bad is nearly torn to shreds by the storm swallowing her. The rain gets so thick that flyers are almost swimming. All in all it is a bad idea to piss off the north wind.
  • The city of Trowth, in The Corsay Books has a downright malevolent climate, with winters cold enough to kill in moments and exotic thunderstorms that can drive people insane. The weather often wrecks havoc with everyone's plans.
  • The Cosmere:
    • The Stormlight Archive:
      • Highstorms are massive, hurricane-like storms that blow through the land every few days, blowing from east to west and carrying the mystical Stormlight. They are so severe that the entire world has been shaped by them; ninety percent of the continent has no soil because the storms have stripped the land down to the bedrock, plants and animals look like things found underwater and can retreat into shells or burrows when threatened, and even the people build their structures in triangles with a point facing east to reduce wind drag, or in sheltered laits. One of the most dangerous parts of a highstorm is the "stormwall": the wind's leading edge, carrying trees, boulders, and anything not nailed down. It is generally accepted that being caught (or strung up as punishment) outside during a highstorm is a death sentence, but with luck and something to serve as a windbreak, it is possible to survive.
      • In the second book, the Everstorm is summoned, which is similar to the Highstorm but it goes the opposite way, west to east, devastating a world built with the other direction in mind. It is fueled by the Cosmic Principle of Hatred and thus seems to be able to intentionally target what it destroys with red lightning often striking specific buildings while ignoring others. Plus it brings Voidspren which turn the placid and omnipresent parshmen into Voidbringers.
    • Tress of the Emerald Sea: The "seas" of the world of Lumar are composed of aether spores which constantly fall from the planet's twelve geostationary moons, and the slightest drop of water causes those spores to release an explosive burst of their associated element. Naturally, this means that to be caught out in the rain is a death sentence for any ship. On most of Lumar the rains are exceedingly regular and can be predicted, but on the Crimson Sea the rain is as random as it is on most worlds in the Cosmere.
  • In The Fifth Season, the titular phenomenon is a continent-spanning hostile weather system lasting at least six months, caused by seismic activity. Highlights include years of frigid darkness, suffocating rains of ash, and acid rain that ruins anything metal; The Empire of Sanze organizes its entire culture around preparing for and enduring the Seasons.
    "Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall; Death is the fifth, and master of all."
  • The Girl from the Miracles District: the entire city is criss-crossed with energy lines that have some dark and foul magic buried deep down. Whenever a storm comes, it causes all of this to boil to the surface, meaning that if you're caught outside during a bad weather - or even inside, in some cases - you can be turned into a mindless monster.
  • Ray Bradbury's short story The Long Rain. The crew of a crashed rocket ship must trek across the surface of Venus, where the rain never stops.
  • The snow on Caradhras in The Lord of the Rings is explicitly hostile to the Fellowship, suggested to be the product of some kind of evil presence of the mountain itself (unrelated to Sauron or his forces). In the book, it even dumps an avalanche behind them after they leave, in case they change their mind.
  • One of the Red Dwarf novels finds Lister on Garbage World. He is attacked by acid rain and later oil rain, which lighting ignites. Turns out The Earth is trying to kill him.
  • "Something In The Rain", a short story from Defying Doomsday, depicts a world where microorganisms that feast on mammalian flesh have been integrated into the rain system, which also caused the rain to be far more frequent. Anyone caught outside during rainfall gets Stripped to the Bone.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Westerosi Bizarre Seasons do not muck about being silly: they all have hostile patches, even the relatively benign "summer" (re: crippling drought, if it goes either hot and long or it's normal and you're in Dorne).
    • It is not a good idea to stick around when the thermometer drops faster than a stone. And, that's even beyond the fact that the aforementioned Bizarre Seasons giving long, hellish winters are in play. More specifically, a sudden, localised drop means you might just be due a visit from the Others and their Wights. They like the cold. It (and a freezing fog bank) either follows them like an obedient puppy, or they just need the general conditions to be right to play with. Either way, it's hinted they can use ice and snow in ways that can turn very deadly, very quickly: their ice swords and armour are far from normal, for starters. And, then, there are whatever the legendary "ice spiders" are. Or whatever other tricks they might well have up their sleeves, like, maybe... sea-ice bridges or self-building siege-ramps. And, winter has come.
    • Stannis Baratheon and Roose Bolton might both argue that, even without Others about, winter has become pretty sodding hostile enough around Winterfell, already — even though it's only just started. General Winter arrived at their little war rather suddenly, after all — forcing the whole siege to be where it is, for starters. Neither are all that enthused about the time or the place. Or, the conditions, for that matter.
    • When the whole river system of the Trident and its tributaries decide to get boisterous thanks to prolonged, wet autumn weather, they don't mess about. Mature, centuries-old trees sweep down the biggest as if they're twigs. Which... can be a bit of a problem for anybody hoping to boat across (or trying to maintain bridges or causeways for whole spans of them). Arya and the Hound barely make it across before the ferry-system comes to a complete halt. It was a hairy, white-water ride the whole way, too. What the well-named Riverlands are like in spring with a winter's worth of stored melt heading their way barely bears thinking about. Heck, the North as a whole would be one giant mud bath.
  • The Taking starts off with an unnatural storm enveloping the entire world, starting with impossibly dense waterspouts that feed record rainfall worldwide. The rain itself even feels unclean. It's far from the worst thing to show up that night, however.
  • "Talma Gordon": A brief but intense storm looses a lightning strike that sets fire to the tower where Captain Gordon and his wife and son are sleeping.
  • The Terror. Shortly before they encounter the monster for the first time, a scouting party on King William Island is bombarded by a fierce lightning storm from which they can only cower in their tents in terror (after throwing away the metal poles, meaning that with the canvas collapsed they get pummeled black and blue by hailstones). However that doesn't prove to be as fatal in the long run as the lengthy winters that leave them icebound and drive away any animals they could hunt. For some reason the spring thaw never happens.

    Live Action TV 
  • In the pilot episode of Arrow the island of Lian Yu is shown is covered in storm clouds to give it a menacing air. Ironically it's quite sunny after this.
  • Inverted in the pilot of Lost. Michael promises to look for Vincent as soon as the rain stops. No sooner does he say this than the rain stops.
    • A storm batters the Island in the very last episode.
  • An early episode of The Pacific is only the most recent example. While everyone else contracts tropical diseases, it finally comes a clear blue day. The Gunnery Sergeant tells everyone to wait for the rain to start and shower in it. He gets undressed in the middle of the camp and lathers up, loudly reciting the Marine Rules of Conduct regarding cleanliness. Then the rain stops immediately. Gunny looks up at the sky and shouts "Is that all?"

    Newspaper Comics 
  • In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin and his family once spent two whole weeks in a monsoon, where the rain only let up at the very end, right when they're packing to leave.
  • In Peanuts, Sally is camping with a friend and they are sleeping out in the open. Her friend is worried that a star is going to fall and hit her on the head. At that, Sally says that fear is silly and reassures "Nothing to going to fall out of the sky," and that point, it begins to rain.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Arduin RPG, The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources. Weather in Arduin can include blizzards, windstorms up to 70 m.p.h., heavy rain, thunderstorms and lightning, blistering heat (up to 120 °F), intense cold (down to -40 °F) and hail storms, and that's just on land. At sea weather can be waterspouts, typhoons and hurricanes. All of these types of nasty weather will last from 1-6 days.
  • The BattleTech rulebook Tactical Operations has a large selection of rules for severe weather- everything from fog to tornadoes to lightning to swarms of flesh-eating insects.
  • Call of Cthulhu supplement Dreamlands, adventure "Yellow Sails". When the Investigators arrive at Sarrub the weather will be extremely bad: freezing winds blowing off the sea, bringing blizzards and sleet.
  • SPI's Dragon Quest supplement The Enchanted Wood. Unnatural weather in the Enchanted Woods includes a variety of damage-causing hail (black, explosive, gemstone, glowing, huge, and invisible), a dense fog that manifests an evil strangling mist, razor sleet that cuts up any creature it hits, black rain that corrodes anything it touches (including living creatures) like acid, and a blazing sun that causes exhaustion and dehydration.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Module DQ1 The Shattered Statue. The PCs have a 50% chance of bad weather each day, including blizzards, driving rain, freezing rain, cold rain, a cold snap, snow, strong winds and biting sleet.
    • Module I12 Egg of the Phoenix.
      • While the PCs are traveling from the Crypts of Empyrea back to Nimbortan, they will encounter a brief bizarre storm. It starts with a gale force wind, continues with rain that is almost boiling hot, then changes to razor-sharp sleet that slices exposed flesh and clothing to ribbons.
      • When the PCs try to take the Egg back to Doc's Island, they have a 50% chance each day of having a blizzard, driving rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow, strong winds or ice storm.
    • Greyhawk campaign setting:
      • Module WG7 Castle Greyhawk. On any given day, the title edifice is beset with random nasty weather caused by druid weather control magic. It includes torrential rain, winds up to 60 m.p.h., tornadoes, hailstorms, temperatures down to -40 °F, sleet, snow, lightning storms, blistering temperatures up to 130 °F and severe dust storms.
      • World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting boxed set (1983) "Glossography" booklet. Adventurers in the world of Greyhawk can face extremely dangerous weather, including windstorms (with wind speeds up to 100 m.p.h.), dust storms, tornadoes, sand storms, heavy blizzards, heavy snow storms, sleet storms, hail storms, heavy rainstorms, thunderstorms, monsoons, hurricanes, gales (with wind speeds up to 88 m.p.h.), tropical storms and typhoons. Some areas have intense heat or cold in addition.
    • Module Masters of Eternal Night. While traveling from Stormport to the crater, the PCs will face harsh winter weather such as blizzards and whiteouts.
    • Fully endorsed in game-master advice for the Ravenloft campaign setting, where Nature's hostility is an important tool for creating an oppressive atmosphere.
    • Many extraplanar locations have such things as constant acidic snow and unrelenting tiny meteorite showers to ensure that unprepared low-level travelers are slain on arrival.
    • The 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide had a variety of nasty weather to throw at players, including hurricanes, tornadoes, dust storms, blizzards and thunderstorms. The Supplement books Frostburn, Sandstorm, and Stormwrack add a bunch of nasty new rules for severe weather.
    • Forgotten Realms supplement FR5 The Savage Frontier. In the High Forest, Wizard Weather can include red snow ("that tastes like blood"), hot rain ("which boils the flesh"), blizzards in summer, exotic (invisible, multi-colored, huge, explosive, glowing and/or black) hailstones, dense fog (with evil creatures lurking within), razor-sharp sleet ("draws blood and scores metal"), black acidic rain, and desert-like blazing heat.
    • Dungeon magazine #6 adventure "White Death". The adventure takes place in mountainous terrain in the arctic region of the planet. Each day there's a 75% chance that the weather will be so bad that it will damage the Player Characters. The damage depends upon the wind speed: the stronger the wind, the more damage the PCs take.
    • Mayfair Games's AD&D compatible adventure Dragons of Weng T'sen. While in the Valley of Weng T'sen, the Player Characters will experience wildly variable weather that can change up to every half hour. Weather types include freezing cold, heat waves, blizzards, hail, heavy rain and thunderstorms. The weather is caused by the dreams of the Dragon Lords who lie in poisoned sleep nearby.
  • Earthdawn. The Gamemaster is encouraged to use bad weather against the PCs, everything from strong thunderstorms to extreme heat and cold.
  • Gamma World module GW6 Alpha Factor. Gamma World weather can be nasty. Each day there is a 40% chance of bad weather, including thunderstorms with lightning, hailstorms, snow storms, ice storms, monsoons, tornadoes and acid rain (with real acid).
  • Paranoia adventure The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues. While outside Alpha Complex the PCs can be hit by "Bad Weather" (rain and snow) or "Really Grim Weather" (anything from ice storms and flash floods up to tornadoes).
  • Mouse Guard: Members of the title organization have to worry about this all the time. The Territories have bad weather on a regular basis in every season of the year, including snow storms (late Fall through early Spring), blizzards and ice storms (Winter), heat waves (Summer), rain (all year long), thunderstorms with possible lightning strikes and flash floods (late Spring and late Summer) and autumn storms (late Fall). Nasty weather is one of the four hazards that the GM uses to create obstacles on a mission.
  • In Rocket Age hostile weather is a serious danger to the heroes, understandable considering that includes Venusian rainstorms (thankfully not acidic), Martian sandstorms and lightning storms in the upper atmospheres of Gas Giants.
  • Traveller:
    • Double Adventure "Mission on Mithril". Weather on the planet Mithril is determined randomly. It includes both mild and severe storms on a regular basis, with the temperature almost always below freezing.
    • Supplement 2 Animal Encounters. Depending on the type of planet they are on, PCs can encounter tornadoes, sandstorms, monsoons (severe winds and violent rain), and blizzards.
    • Traveller 2300 adventure Energy Curve has windstorms, blizzards, storms and "ice fall" (razor sharp hail).
    • Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society #2 article "The Bestiary". Possible weather on the planet Victoria includes high winds, rain squalls (high wind, rain, thunder and lightning), violent rainstorms and electrical storms (high winds and lightning).
  • Warhammer 40,000 has optional rules for all manner of environmental conditions, including weather. Unsurprisingly, given the setting, many of them are lethal. Lightning can fry men and equipment, hailstones heavy enough to crush skulls may be falling, or the blizzard (or sandstorm) may be so intense that it clogs intake valves on skimmers and forces them to crash.

    Video Games 
  • Arknights:
    • "Break the Ice" is set in the country of Kjerag and introduces blizzards, which inflicts operators with cold and buffs enemies. Ice tiles will freeze both operators and enemies if they are standing on them when a blizzard hits, and frozen enemies on ice tiles are more susceptible to push and pull effects.
    • The game mode Reclamation Algorithm features weather, which causes a plethora of negative effects during an operation: acid rain that inflicts Corrosion damage, lightning strikes dealing True damage, scorching heat inflicting operators with Burn damage, drought that increases redeployment time and sandstorms that reduce operators' ATK stat.
  • Battlefield 2042: Many maps in the game will have various weather hazards that were designed to give the players challenge by forcing them to adapt to the sudden environmental changes, examples including sandstorm that could drastically limit visibility or tornado that could lift players and vehicles into the vortex.
  • Dragon Quest VII has the Gray Rain, which is more than just depressing: anyone who gets caught out in it is turned to stone. While a cure exists, it doesn't work if the victims have been worn down by the elements, a fate which befell the village of Dialec/Regenstein long before your arrival.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas: Lonesome Road, the Divide is plagued by skin-flaying sandstorms spawned from a botched meteorology experiment by Big MT's Mad Scientists, adding insult to the nuclear cataclysm triggered by the Courier there.
  • Gears of War 2 has this during the escape from the research facility. Razor Hail. This stuff is so hostile it will kill you if stay out in it for more than a few seconds.
    • Gears of War 4 ups the ante with windflares, which are localized hurricane/tornado combos featuring winds intense enough to shred buildings and hurl vehicles through the air, miles from the actual vortex. They're accompanied by bizarre laser-like discharges of continuous and mobile lightning which can and will kill you if you don't evade them.
  • As implied by the title, the entirety of Heavy Rain is set during heavy rainfall that a Serial Killer is using to kill young boys - he locks them in an underground drainage tank that gradually fills up over a couple of days, and if the cops and protagonists don't find the boy in time, he drowns. That way, although the weather poses no serious physical threat to the main castnote , it sets a hard deadline for their investigation and acts as much as an enemy as the actual killer.
  • Kona is set in Northern Canada in the middle of a blizzard.
  • In the Landing Series of flight simulation games (Midnight Landing, Top Landing, and Landing High Japan, in particular), the weather starts off nice and calm, but as you progress through each stage, the winds get stronger and stronger, and change directions more frequently. By the end of Top Landing, expect to see wind shears of 15 meters per second, making it extermely hard to land without going off-course.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 has this as a gameplay mechanic in one campaign, appropriately called "Heavy Rain". After reaching the end of the level, you must then fight your way back to the starting point, through cornfields, an abandoned mill and a deserted town...all in the constant, obscuring rain and flooding of a southern hurricane. Good luck not hitting any witches when you can barely see them. Later on, the same hurricane-heavy rain has a possiblity to pop up during "The Passing".
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, thunderstorms will occasionally roll across Hyrule, and it is not a good idea to be outside in one, especially while wearing metal equipment. Even ordinary rain is problematic, since wet surfaces become harder to climb. The rain becomes a major plot point when first traveling to Zora's Domain, as a malfunctioning Divine Beast Vah Ruta is making it rain constantly with its trunk.
  • Mega Man:
    • Mega Man 4: Toadman's level is home to some hostile winds that are quite capable of blowing you off platforms, or even blowing small, hard to hit enemies into you. Then there's the level boss's Acid Rain attack, which he will happily use unless you know how to stop him.
    • Mega Man X6: Rainy Turtloid's stage has acid rains occurring after you go through certain parts of the stage, that will do Damage Over Time to your character. The rains are apparently generated by special machines, that you have to locate and destroy, but not before you destroy their shield generators first.
  • The third chapter of Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark is set on the eighth level of the Nine Hells, a frozen plane with a constant blizzard that deals cold damage. By that level your party is probably badass enough to have a few elemental-resistance items sitting around to ensure you can walk untouched through the storm.
  • Sonic Rush Adventure: The game starts with Sonic and Tails flying in their plane, the Tornado, in the middle of a storm. In a matter of moments, they're struck by lightning and crash.
  • The beginning of Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! has Spyro in the middle of the rain season in the dragon lands. In his own words...
    Spyro: Is this rain ever going to stop? I've forgotten what the sun looks like...
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: One of the most dangerous things that can happen in the Zone is an event variously called an "emission" or a "blowout". It manifests with phenomena such as low droning noises, weird cloud formations, and lightning flashes, and then the sky turns blood-red and you'll notice that every single NPC around, regardless of faction or even if they were in the middle of a gunfight, will immediately drop what they were doing and start running. If you don't follow suit and manage to get into shelter before the shockwaves hit... that's it, you're dead. (As will be demonstrated by any unlucky NPCs who didn't make it in time.) And these things happen at random in 2/3 of the Stalker games.
  • Habitable worlds in Stellaris can spawn with the Hazardous Weather modifier (symbolized by a funnel cloud) that gives bonuses to energy production for the price of reduced habitability and pop happiness. Terraforming the planet removes the modifier, though.
  • Tomb Raider (2013): After Lara radios the rescue airplane, the spirit of Himiko causes a storm to bring it down, as a ghostly voice says in Japanese, "No one leaves..." Later, she calls another storm to cause a helicopter to crash, leading to Roth's death.

    Web Comics 
  • Derelict: Caught in a storm.
  • Legend of the Blue Diamond: Dangerous acid rain has fallen near the Feathered Tribe's village since the start of the Great Dying.
  • Starslip gives us Planet Kliith and its anti-tornado warnings.
    Quinn: Anti-tornadoes?
    Ramden: Places where there are not currently tornadoes.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time:
    • In "Rainy Day Daydream", Finn and Jake are kept inside their tree-house when it starts to rain knives.
    • In "Bad Jubies", Finn, Jake, BMO, and Lumpy Space Princess are stuck together in a shelter during a massive storm described as all sorts of bad weather rolled into one. The storm even turns out to be sentient and aggressive, but Jake calms it down with his bird-calls.
  • Centaurworld: In "Fragile Things" the herd runs into a "taurnado", a living centaur-shaped tornado that tries to suck up hapless travelers and absorb their souls into its being.
  • The Looney Tunes Show: In "Fish and Visitors", a nasty storm comes just as Yosemite Sam had finished installing solar panels for his house. This forces Bugs and Daffy to let him stay with them until it passes. At the end, when the storm finally lets up, Bugs promises to always help his neighbors out in these cases no matter what problems they cause... only for the storm to come back, causing Bugs to immediately go back on his promise before Sam can ask to stay with them again.
  • The Owl House: According to "The Intruder", rain on the Boiling Isles is boiling hot. Eda also mentions "gore-nados", "shale hail" and "painbows" (which according to King are like ordinary rainbows, but they turn you inside out if you stare directly at one).

    Real Life 
  • This is how Napoleon's campaign in Russia ended in a colossal failure: as the French army was invading the Russian land, the winter came. And with it chilling blizzards that decimated the ill-equipped troops.
    • Happened again to a lesser extent during Hitler's attempted invasion of Russia.
    • Russians have taken to calling this phenomenon "General Winter", as though the season itself is part of the Russian military helping to defend its borders. This backfired on them during the Winter War with Finland, however, which was even harsher than what the Russians were used to.
    • People tend to exaggerate how silly it was for both Napoleon and Hitler to forget about the Russian winter while they were invading. The problem with this version of events is that they didn't forget. They knew that the Russian winter would impede their military action. This is why they both invaded during the early summer, and tried to force a quick capitulation. The problem is, however, that the Russian and Soviet armies managed to survive using Fabian tactics until the winter started, at which point they knew they had the homefield advantage. So, the more reasonable solution to the Russia problem is to just not get into a land war in Russia at all.
    • Anyone invading Russia from the west is effectively starting on the narrowest available front on its European border. But the deeper into the country you get, the more men you have to deploy over a widening front and the longer your supply lines become - and in winter, the more problematical. The only time Russia has been successfully invaded and conquered was by an army beginning in the East — where the opposite condition applied, the front progressively narrowed into a relatively small area covering the main population centres, and the invading army - Ghengis Khan's Mongols - was self-sufficient even in winter and was capable of using frozen rivers as highways for its cavalry army and supply train. This way, the Mongols were able to concentrate shattering force into breaking the russian armies and swiftly capturing cities, including Kiev and Moscow, in December and January.
  • The Spanish Armada was destroyed by a series of nasty thunderstorms while trying to invade Britain.
  • When the Mongols invaded Japan, their assault was halted by a severe typhoon. Then the same exact thing happened when they tried again. Both sides took this as divine providence; Kubhlai Khan decided to back off until God was in a better mood, while to the Japanese it was the origin of the word kamikaze ("divine wind").
  • The Burning of Washington DC in the War of 1812 was abruptly halted when a hurricane struck the city, putting out the fires, killing several soldiers and civilians, and ruining the fleet. Ironically, the storm ending up doing more damage to the city than the British invaders.
  • Recognizing weather and weather survival skills make up an important part of maritime and aviator training, both amateur and professional. Justified, since foul weather in the air or at sea can be fatal.
  • On a more mundane level, even everyday travel can be treacherous for those who go out during bad weather. With modern climate data, weather reports, and easy access to hazard warnings the worst can usually be avoided by someone prepared and paying attention.
  • The Australian city of Melbourne is notorious for having wildly unpredictable weather. In the time a Melburnian could walk to the shops and back, the weather will likely have gone from sunstroke-inducing heat, to torrential rain, to gale-force winds, and back to sun again. Sounds crazy, but remember: Australia.
    If you don't like the weather in Melbourne, just wait five minutes.
  • Bad weather is ultimately what did in the infamous Donner Party, a group looking to emigrate from Illinois to Central California in 1846 who had to resort to cannibalism to survive. They got a late start out of Missouri in April and were looking to make up time from the jump. One of the emigrants named James Reed had read about a potential shortcut that could save them a month cutting across the Great Salt Lake desert instead of the tested route of going up through Idaho and coming down through Nevada to forgo the treacherous and unforgiving desert. It took them longer than expected to get to the desert so they got there in August where it was too hot travel during the day and too windy to travel at night. It took them until October to be able to get to the Sierra Nevadas on the border between Nevada and California and they couldn’t get through the mountains before the first snowstorm that November. Since the Sierra Nevadas are so close to the cold ocean water of the Pacific, they’re prone to early and heavy snowfalls. It wouldn’t be until the spring when the passes opened up that they were able to get the last survivors out.
  • The production of A New Hope was severely hampered by weather. On the first day of filming in Tunisia, the area was hit by the worst rainstorm in fifty years, forcing them to take a day off. Three years later while filming The Empire Strikes Back, Norway was hit by the worst snowstorm in fifty years. They filmed Luke's escape from the Wampa cave by simply opening a hallway door and having Mark Hamill run outside into the snowbank.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Alternative Title(s): Hostile Precipitation

Top

Toad Man

Toad Man is one of the eight robot masters from the fourth Mega Man game. His special weapon is Rain Flush, unavoidable acid rain that is summoned when he starts dancing. Defeating him gives Mega Man his weapon. (Gameplay done by Skyward4d) (https://www.youtube.com/@Skyward4d)

How well does it match the trope?

5 (4 votes)

Example of:

Main / FrogMen

Media sources:

Report