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The \ no article Irish weather is normally cool and wet in October.
I thought it should be the Irish weather because there is only one Irish weather. However, I have found the following examples from Cambridge dictionary which confuse me.
The weather is expected to remain clear for the next few days.
The rescue operation has been complicated by (zero article) bad weather.
(zero article) Fair weather was forecast for the following day.
The weather was good at the start of the week.
Both
Irish weather is normally cool and wet in October.
and
The Irish weather is normally cool and wet in October.
are perfectly normal and grammatical. Without the article, "Irish weather" means "all weather in Ireland". There might be multiple weather patterns, but the speaker is saying that they share this characteristic. In this case the meaning is unchanged.
In general at the start of a sentence "The weather" is more common, but can be replaced by an adjective indicating what whether is meant, such as "Irish weather"
The weather is expected to remain clear for the next few days.
When speaking of weather in general or in a particular area (often implied by context) an article is usual in this construction. However
Clear weather is expected to persist for the next few days.
would not use an article, and is perfectly normal. Tis is much like your example:
Fair weather was forecast for the following day.
This could be recast as
The weather was forecast to be fair for the following day.
About the rescue example in the question:
- The rescue operation has been complicated by bad weather.
- The rescue operation has been complicated by the bad weather.
The meaning is not much different between these two. The first might refer to multiple instances of bad weather, or bad weather in several different places. The second emphasized "the bad weather" as a unitary thing to a greater degree. Both are grammatical and common.
Definite Article is used when you refer to a specific thing in context. However, there are some situations in which you can not use definite article such are:
countries, places, widely-known things...
Ex:
Wrong:The Brazil is very hot;
Correct: Brazil is very hot;
Definite Article explains itself why it can't be used with such contexts mentioned above: Definite Article is used to specify and unicalize something, a country doesn't need to receive such highlight since it is already a specific and unique thing.
The weather is expected to remain clear for the next few days.
In the example above, definite article was used probably because the speaker was referring to a specific weather (hot, cold, sunny...) not to the word weather itself that refers to the climatic conditions.
