The window showing the currently selected tools also displays the weather. I know that certain weather like tornado warning are indication for random disasters, but what effects does the other, everyday weather like sunny, cloudy or raining have on the city?
I'm playing the DOS version on DOSBox running on an Android tablet.
Excerpted from an electronic copy of the manual (which appears to be hosted on a retro Amiga gaming website, but the manual text was identical across versions except for perhaps the Mac version, if I recall correctly):
Even though you don't see the seasons change or the rains fall, and you don't feel the wind blow (other than an occasional tornado or hurricane), there is a climate model in SimCity 2000 that affects your city. Weather reports are available in the newspapers.
Weather trends are generated on a monthly basis, when the simulation looks at the current trend and the season and throws in a certain weighted random element and decides the next trend. The different trends are: cold, clear, hot, foggy, chilly, overcast, snowy, rainy, windy, blizzard, hurricane and tornado. Blizzard, hurricane and tornado are the least likely to occur.
Each trend has a temperature, a wind and a humidity element. In general, temperature affects the water supply, the availability of solar power, and the likelihood of fires and riots; wind affects the availability of wind power, and humidity affects the water supply. These effects combine in various ways in the various trends.
I don't remember ever really noticing any of the more subtle effects described above, but I was pretty young when I played SC2k regularly.
The only version of the game to contain weather was the Super Nintendo Version, as well as the Saturn version. It actually has visible rain and snow fall in those ports.
