While it is nice to occasionally have rain in order to spice up the tactical situation things a bit, there could be more types of weather than just that. Additionally it is odd that if it rains, it rains in the entire country. So we’ve upgraded the weather system. Weather can now be local, meaning that at the same time, different sectors can have different weather. When and where weather happens is not controlled by the ini and SectorNames.xml, where you can enter specific weather chances for several weather types. As the JA2_Options.ini tells you, the current weather types are:

• Normal weather. When no particular interesting stuff is falling from the sky, besides the odd mortar shell or so.
• Rain – water falling from the sky. Classic stuff
• Thunderstorms – every rain shower has a chance to be upgraded to a thunderstorm, which is like a more boss version of rain. With lightning, louder sounds, higher penalties and everything.
• Sandstorms – likely to happen in the desert, a severe sandstorms can be devastating. Visual range is drastically lowered, your mercs can hear almost nothing over the noise, and even breathing gets harder…
• Snow. While this might seem odd in Arulco, this is a worthy addition (and might be used more widely in mods with a less tropical climate). I’ve added it to the mountains so we don’t forget it exists.

As you can see in the video, there is now a new map display that shows you what weather currently happens where.
This is fully savegame compatible.
This has been added in r8253 & GameDir r2325. Using the new exe without the new GameDir data will cause BLOOD TO RAIN FROM THE SKY, AND NOT IN A FUN KIND OF WAY.