Thanks Tudor, and exactly the point I was trying to make. Hazy in the sense
used today is a lazy expression. A forecaster for today should have said "
it will be bright at times today rather than sunny as there will be thick
patches of high cloud " and of course in an ideal world you could mention
the dreaded word "cirrus" , an anathema to many forecasters. I mentioned it
to a group of retired people today and they did not immediately have a heart
attack or became paralysed with fear. The public can handle these words.
Also it would only have taken a few extra seconds at the most to say the
additional words I mentioned earlier.
As Tudor says true haze in the meteorological sense is quite different, a
sometimes lurid sky giving rise to completely different colour tones both of
the sky and those at ground level.

Ian Currie-Coulsdon



"TudorHgh" wrote in message
...
I can't see much wrong with the expression myself. I think the reference
is to the sunshine (not cloud) being indistinct which is one of the
meanings of 'hazy' in my dictionary.
Why should an adjective in general use be restricted to descriptions of
visibility just because the noun is also used technically for one
visibility range/obscuration type?


The point is that "hazy sunshine" is a separate phenomenon from
"milky"
or "watery" sunshine. It's yellowish sunshine in a dirty atmosphere and
simply has a different look and feel to it from sunshine partially
obscured by
Ci. There need not be any cloud at all for there to be real "hazy
sunshine"
though quite frequently there is Cu, the bases of which are yellow/brown
and
the tops white. When you can easily look directly at the red globe of
the sun
at an altitude of 5°, that's hazy sunshine.
I have even heard a forecast of "hazy sunshine" for a day when the
sun
was going to be intermittently obscured by small/medium Cu. That is just
crass.
I suspect one reason we hear so much of this phrase is that many of
today's weather presenters have little feel for the weather (many obvious
instances of this) and the distinction between haze and high cloud simply
does
not occur to them. Perhaps they've never noticed it, or perhaps they
have, but
think such niceties are beyond the public. Have they ever thought that
just a
smithereen of education could be a good thing? Dream on.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.