A weather house is a folk art

Folk art

Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....

 device in the shape of a small German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 or Alpine

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

 chalet

Chalet

A chalet , also called Swiss chalet, is a type of building or house, native to the Alpine region, made of wood, with a heavy, gently sloping roof with wide, well-supported eaves set at right angles to the front of the house.-Definition and origin:...

 that indicates the weather

Weather

Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...

. A typical weather house has two doors side by side. The left side has a girl or woman, the right side a boy or man. The female figure comes out of the house when the weather is sunny and dry, while the male comes out to indicate rain

Rain

Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...

.

In fact, a weather house functions as a hygrometer

Hygrometer

A hygrometer is an instrument used for measuring the moisture content in the environmental air, or humidity. Most measurement devices usually rely on measurements of some other quantity such as temperature, pressure, mass or a mechanical or electrical change in a substance as moisture is absorbed...

 embellished by folk art. The male and female figures ride on a balance bar, which is suspended by a piece of catgut

Catgut

Catgut is a type of cord that is prepared from the natural fibre found in the walls of animal intestines. Usually sheep or goat intestines are used, but it is occasionally made from the intestines of cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys.-Etymology:...

 or hair. The gut relaxes or shrinks based on the humidity

Humidity

Humidity is a term for the amount of water vapor in the air, and can refer to any one of several measurements of humidity. Formally, humid air is not "moist air" but a mixture of water vapor and other constituents of air, and humidity is defined in terms of the water content of this mixture,...

 in the surrounding air, relaxing when the air is wet and tensing when the air is dry. This action swings one figure or the other out of the house depending on the humidity.

Weather houses are associated in the popular mind with Germany or Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, and are often decorated in the style of a cuckoo clock

Cuckoo clock

A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum-regulated, that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call and typically has a mechanical cuckoo that emerges with each note...

. Many weather houses also bear a small thermometer

Thermometer

Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles. A thermometer has two important elements: the temperature sensor Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer (from the...

 on the part between the two doors that conceals the gut suspension, and many also contain a piggy bank

Piggy bank

Piggy bank is the traditional name of a coin accumulation and storage receptacle; it is most often, but not exclusively, used by children. The piggy bank is known to collectors as a "still bank" as opposed to the "mechanical banks" popular in the early 20th century. These items are also often used...

.

Cultural influence

A one-act English comic opera called Weather or No

Weather or No

Weather or No is a one-act comic opera, styled a "musical duologue", by Bertram Luard-Selby with a libretto by Adrian Ross and William Beach...

, about the male and female figures in a weather house falling in love, became popular when it was played as a companion piece to The Mikado

The Mikado

The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

in 1896-97.

In contrast, the term Weather House in the United States refers to buildings built by the U. S. Signal Service and then the U. S. Weather Bureau to house the instruments and Chief Weather Observers so that they could do their job. For more information see the U.S. Weather Bureau.