Realistic Weather V3.0

Weather has been one of the things I’ve wanted to work on pretty much since I started modding this game about four months ago. I’m a meteorologist, so naturally I probably pay more attention to weather in games than most people do. RDR2 gets a lot right, but there have always been a few things about its weather that threw me off.

The biggest one was just how quickly everything can develop. You can go from relatively clear skies to rapidly growing clouds and heavy precipitation in what feels like no time at all. Thunderstorms especially can sometimes look like they’re forming almost instantly.

I actually put this project off a few times and kept coming back to it here and there between other mods I was more excited to work on. Since weather is already part of my day job, it wasn’t always the project I felt most tempted to jump back into once I got home. But the more the project grew, the more potential I started seeing in it, and eventually I got really motivated to focus on it properly. And the more I looked into RDR2’s weather system, the more I realized that the weather itself isn’t really the problem. Rockstar’s atmospheric system is actually incredibly detailed. A lot of it just isn’t given enough time to develop.

So that’s mainly what this mod tries to change. Rather than replacing the game’s weather or completely changing how it looks, it changes how weather develops and transitions from one state to another. Clouds and precipitation-producing systems are given much more time to build, evolve and eventually dissipate. The same applies when weather is clearing too — it’s not just about making the buildup into storms slower.

I really recommend checking out this part of the video.
0:31 – 0:40
2:35 – 2:54
In vanilla, you can pretty clearly see the defined weather grid/perimeter sliding across the landscape. With Realistic Weather, the transition is much more irregular and randomized, so weather moves in less like a giant box and more like actual weather.

This part really showcases the convection behavior and how much it’s been enhanced. You can actually watch the clouds develop vertically rather than having the next weather state simply appear.
2:49 – 3:02

This one is a really good example of the slower overall development. In vanilla, the weather builds and clears extremely quickly. In the enhanced version, the cloud field gradually thickens and spreads across the landscape for much longer before the precipitation arrives. I especially like 1:10–2:10, where you can still see brighter areas around the horizon while the darker cloud base develops overhead.

What it does
The biggest change is how the mod handles transitions into precipitation and storms.
Instead of allowing a large jump such as:

SUNNY → THUNDERSTORM

to morph directly from one weather state into the other, Realistic Weather can progressively move through intermediate atmospheric states, for example:

SUNNY → CLOUDS → OVERCAST → OVERCASTDARK → THUNDER → THUNDERSTORM

There are no pauses between them. It’s one continuous evolution. This makes a surprisingly big difference to RDR2’s clouds. They no longer appear to spawn into existence nearly as quickly, and the edge of an approaching weather system is considerably less obvious.
I also deliberately haven’t tried to make every transition perfectly linear visually. Sometimes the clouds break for a moment, you get another glimpse of sunlight, and then things deteriorate again: Weather doesn’t always look like a loading bar from clear to stormy.

The mod also affects the formation and dissipation of the game’s other natural weather states. Clear skies, clouds, overcast conditions, fog, rain, showers, snow and other weather types are given more time to transition rather than rapidly appearing or disappearing.

Extreme Weather
While working on the transitions I ended up going considerably further than I originally intended.
Thunderstorms now have a chance to develop into more intense variants:

80% Normal, 17% Severe, 3% Violent

These probabilities are configurable.
Severe and Violent storms can bring stronger gusts, changing wind direction, directional shear, heavier precipitation, more active lightning and short periods where the storm becomes particularly intense. Violent storms also include intermittent peak cells rather than simply sitting at maximum intensity for their entire lifetime. Conditions can ramp up dramatically and then ease again. I wanted the rare storms to actually make me stop and notice them without turning every thunderstorm in the game into a disaster movie.

Wind, turbulence and lightning
One thing I definitely didn’t want was an “Extreme Weather = just double the wind speed” system.
Violent storms sample nearby geometry and use it to modify the amount of wind variability around the player. That means dense areas, alleys, buildings, cliffs and confined terrain can produce more turbulent and rapidly changing winds than open country.
It’s obviously not a CFD simulation, but it gives the wind considerably more life and makes somewhere like Saint Denis behave differently from standing in an open field. Extreme storms have somewhat more active lightning, but the mod deliberately keeps it restrained. The result is more active than vanilla during the strongest storms without looking like a strobe light.

Installation
Requires ScriptHookRDR2.
Place:

RealisticWeather.asi
RealisticWeather.ini

in your main Red Dead Redemption 2 directory.

RealisticWeather.ini

includes settings for:
▫️ Transition Duration
▫️ Severe and Violent Storm Probability
▫️ Wind Strength, Maximum Wind Speed
▫️ Geometry-Based Turbulence
▫️ Extreme Weather Intensity

The supplied defaults are what I recommend starting with.

Compatibility
Currently undergoing compatibility testing. I’m fairly confident that mods which only edit game files through LML should be compatible. Script mods (ASI files) that mention weather changes need review.

Confirmed compatible so far:
✅ Dynamic Seasons
✅ More Persistent Weather
✅ WhyEm Visuals
✅ WhyEm’s Particles

Incompatible:
🟥 Weather Cycle Adjuster
🟥 Rampage Smooth Transition

Credits:

sauvy11