What is the word or phrase for the arch of blue on the western horizon on a cloudy day? I think it promises a clear day tomorrow.
I tried the reverse dictionary and got words like azure, Seattle International Airport and duck. ???

Isn't that just what it means? A segment of promise ?

Often the sunset sky predicts the weather for the next day.
Yesterday at sunset there was a deep red sun sort of dropping from dark grey clouds. That means rain and sunshine for now. A red dawn promises rain.
It's caught in a popular saying:
" morning-red, water in the ditch; evening-red, nice weather aboard." (can't make it rhyme in English)

The English language version is "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning." Probably hard to make that one rhyme in Nederlandsk.

some versions say "shepherds" for "sailors", and the version the Gospels doesn't use either.

Of course, the "sailor" version doens't have anything to do with the weather. The 'red sky at night' part means there's a riot in town. The townies are mad at the sailors for stealing all their women and the sailors are burning the downtown area. The 'red sky at morning' part means that the shore patrol has come with their paddy wagons with the flashing red lights and are hauling off any sailors stupid enough to hang around that long.

thanks. I didn't know that and its always interesting to learn the origins of folk sayings.

pretty sure its none of those...

Source? This sounds like what we would call a furphy to me.

I'm curious as to how the sunset should predict the next day's weather when in the Northern Hemisphere your weather comes from the East? I can see how it could possibly work down here on the bottom side of the globe where our weather goes West to East, but surely when you face the sunset you're looking towards yesterday's weather aren't you?

The paddy wagons will come and get you for spreading falsifications and yes I can make it rhyme easy.

Rood by nacht, schipper slaap zacht! Rood in de morgen, schipper's zorgen ; oops, it was just the other way around, so...

You know all these sailor's words come from Dutch and English together. Ask the house-lingoist.

boy, howdy! talk about your wrong-headed notions. see jet stream.

Maybe a stupid question , but do we call East East and West West because the North Pole is orientation center? What if the South Pole was?

East and west derive, respectively, from the PIE roots aus-, meaning 'shine', referring to the sunrise, and wes-pero-, meaning 'evening'. That would not change if the South Pole were the orientation center.

Well, I've always called it Seattle International Airport, but that's just me.

Especially for Bran: I learned an expression when I moved to rural New York: "Dutchman's breeches" -- for a break of blue in an otherwise overcast sky.

oh, lordylord. Pants in the sky!

But then what the hoop is this?
This

But right, this is true too:
Dutchman's breeches: 1. Two patches of blue appearing in a stormy sky giving the promise of better weather, i.e. enough blue sky to make a Dutchman ....

Upper level jetstreams notwithstanding, surface level weather still comes predominately from the East in the Northern Hemisphere, hence the problems for Europe that the Chernobyl disaster caused. Furthermore, jetstreams are relatively small in width, unlike the warm and cold fronts that move over continents.

>surface level weather still comes predominately from the East in the Northern Hemisphere

this is startling news to me, having lived in the Upper Midwest for 64 years and seeing nearly all of our weather fronts roll in from the west.

"Fronts are guided by winds aloft, but they normally move at lesser speeds. In the northern hemisphere, they usually travel from some west to east direction (even though they can move in a more north-south direction as well). Movement is due to the pressure gradient force (horizontal differences in atmospheric pressure) and the Coriolis effect, caused by the earth spinning about its axis. Frontal zones can be contorted by geographic features like mountains and large bodies of water." -wikipedia

prevailing westerlies

Logic not withstanding, here in north central Texas, most storms and cold fronts come from the west or northwest and occasionally from the southwest. The only weather that typically comes from the southeast is due to tropical storms. I can't remember ever having any weather come from due east or northeast, but I'm sure there are exceptions. My parents live west of me in NM where they often get the same weather the day before I do, except as I mentioned tropical storms such as the remants of Hurricane Dolly which they got the next day instead.

Here on a Northern coast the wind may come from all directions but mainstream is from West-South-and Northwest The weather is conversation piece nr.2, next to "Hallo how are you doing".
Westerns winds bring rain, storms and gales. Eastern winds bring dry continental periods. In summer sunshine and heat; in winter frost and snow.
The best expectations for a good iceskating period is the wind in the North- North East. Then ice will come and stay till the wind shrinks to the South-East.
Alas, Western winds prevail.

Here in New York State the weather comes almost always out of the westsouthwest. The rare exceptions are from the westnorthwest.

yup. I get my weather after Fald's done with it.

Chinook arch!

Apparently Mom woke up at 3 am and remembered the phrase. Chinook is a term from one of the First Nations of the Canadian Praries where she grew up and is the warm wind that occasionally comes in winter and blows in a sudden weather change. In Calgary it isn't unusual to go to work in -20 C and come home after a Chinook in 15 above weather. The reverse happens as well.