Weather forecasting

A forecast is a statement about something that has not happened yet, and most of this vocabulary exists to say how sure that statement is: örtlich, gebietsweise, die Eintrittswahrscheinlichkeit. One word is older than any model. Die Wetterwarte is a staffed weather station, and die Warte on its own is a lookout, a tower or high place from which somebody keeps watch. The verb behind it, warten, first meant to look out for something; waiting is what looking out becomes when the thing is slow to arrive. English kept the watching sense: “ward” goes back to the same Germanic root, as does the “-ward” of “steward”. The noun survives in die Sternwarte, an observatory, and in the figurative von hoher Warte aus, from a lofty vantage point. A weather station is, in the oldest sense, a place for watching the sky.