I agree, Linda. Description should tell us a lot about the character doing the describing, and the one being described.

I personally don’t love to read a lot of description UNLESS the author just manages to describe things in a way I find insanely funny or interesting. Most authors don’t. So a lot of the time, when I see a long stretch of description, I’m probably going to skip over it until I get to the next piece of dialogue or action. That’s just me. I also probably write a little light on description for the same reason—if I find it boring to read, I’m not going to write it and bore my readers.

As far as weather goes, I think it’s fine to describe if it has something to do with the story. If it’s going to rain on Romeo and Juliet’s wedding day, hell yeah, tell us there are clouds in the sky or something. But if it really has nothing to do with the story, I don’t much care about the weather.

I maintain that Charles Dickens was wordy and desperately needed an editor, I don’t care how famous he is.