I'm looking for a more general term to describe any sort of weather or weather-like condition which includes reducing visibility, specifically those which do so to what might be considered a dangerous degree (see examples at the end), but which isn't necessarily associated with a specific form of such conditions in common usage.
This word would be used for the purpose of naming a magic item in a fantasy game setting with the word or phrase referring to the conditions it causes. The effect of the item will be to create an extremely localized area (<50ft radius) of condition appropriate to the place it's used in so to reduce visibility to near zero in the area of effect. It would be determined on a case-by-case basis what the exact form of this condition would be based on the location its used.
Many words I'm finding are ones that I would ordinarily think of as subsets of fog to describe what you'd get on a cold, wet morning ("haze", "mist") in that their common usage tends to imply humidity-related conditions and so wouldn't necessarily work for something like a blizzard.
A good choice would be a word(s) that refer to weather or weather-related conditions specifically without automatically being associated to a specific form. A good secondary option would be one that implies any sort of visibility-reducing / obscuring condition, but again without implying a specific form of such. In either case, the implication should be that vision is hindered by the weather itself (or the side effects of said weather, such as reduced light levels), and not because of anything inherently magical about the weather.
Because I'm looking for this in the sense of naming an object and not to use in a particular sentence, any part of speech should work as long as it can be made to fit in a magic item name of some sort, such as Staff of {word} or {Word}ing staff. It does not have to result in an alliterative name (but bonus if it can), nor does it have to be associated to a specific form of item (ring, orb, periapt, etc. are all acceptable. I'll figure out which is appropriate later).
Examples of effects that this item might produce would include, but are not limited to:
- sandstorms in a desert
- blizzards on a mountain / during the winter
- fog or monsoon in a swamp or other humid location
- plumes of smoke near a volcano or around a smoky campfire, or smog if applied in a more modern setting
- a whirlwind kicking up an obnoxious amount of leaves in a forest or pollen in a meadow
