Learn French: La météo a annoncé que le week-end serait ensoleillé, mais la pluie a gâché le pique-nique. - The weather forecast announced that the weekend would be sunny, but the rain ruined the picnic.

La météo a annoncé que le week-end serait ensoleillé, mais la pluie a gâché le pique-nique.

The weather forecast announced that the weekend would be sunny, but the rain ruined the picnic.

Breakdown of La météo a annoncé que le week-end serait ensoleillé, mais la pluie a gâché le pique-nique.

Questions & Answers about La météo a annoncé que le week-end serait ensoleillé, mais la pluie a gâché le pique-nique.

Why is serait used here instead of the future tense?

This is the sequence of tenses in reported speech. The original quote was probably in the future tense: Le week-end sera ensoleillé (The weekend will be sunny). But because the reporting verb is in the past (a annoncé), the future tense sera must backshift into the conditional tense serait (would be).

I thought la météo meant "the weather." Why does it translate to "the weather forecast" here?

La météo is short for la météorologie. While it is often used in casual conversation to simply mean "the weather" (like in quel temps fait-il ?), it is also the standard word for "the weather forecast." Since the weather itself can't announce things, we know it refers to the forecast here.

Why does the sentence use serait ensoleillé instead of a weather expression with faire?

When talking generally about the weather, French usually uses the verb faire (like il fait beau) or y avoir (like il y a du soleil). However, ensoleillé (sunny) is an adjective describing a specific noun (le week-end). When describing a noun directly, we use the verb être, which is why it becomes le week-end serait here.

Why are a annoncé and a gâché in the passé composé rather than the imparfait?