weather forecast/prognoza pogody

Hi there!
I've got to grips with most of the vocab used in Polish weather forecasts and can read most forecasts in Polish (on websites, in newspapers etc) without much difficulty. BUT there is one word which frequently occurs and baffles me: zatoka. It often appears in phrases such as zatoka niżowa and zatoka niżu. Zatoka translates as bay or gulf, and niż in a weather context translates as a low or depression. I believe the following expressions translate as follows:

układ niskiego ciśnienia = low pressure system
klin niskiego ciśnienia = a trough of low pressure
It looks as though zatoka niżowa is another expression for a trough of low pressure, that is,
zatoka niżowa = klin niskiego ciśnienia, but I may well be mistaken.
If there are any Polish weather forecasters out there who could help with the correct translations of zatoka niżowa and zatoka niżu I'd be most grateful.

Many thanks in advance
Pozdrawiam serdecznie, czarnykot

You are right. "Zatoka niżowa" denotes "zatoka niskiego ciśnienia". The difference between zatoka, klin and układ in meteorology may refer to the shapes of areas of low pressure. Zatoka (bay or gulf) may not be common among English-speaking meteorogists (or perhaps they it call it an "area of low pressure"?), while it is popular among Polish. But I'm not a meteorologist and my remarks are purely linguistic.

from a Polish encyclopedia (PWN):


from Wikipedia (pl):


So yes, it looks like klin and zatoka mean more or less the same, at least for a non-professional :)


In the PWN encyclopedia there's no such thing as "klin niskiego ciśnienia" only "klin wysokiego ciśnienia" and "zatoka niskiego ciśnienia".

I guess Wikipedia explains the difference between "klin" and "zatoka" - it's about the shape of the isobars on the map, klin has a U shape, zatoka - V shape.