Fitzgerald uses weather, specifically contrasting rain, gloom, and darkness with sunshine, light, and happiness throughout the book. Five significant quotes dealing with the weather in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby include Nick’s thoughts at the beginning of the book:
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
This is an allusion to how Gatsby will attempt to restart his life to include Daisy. It is also a commentary on how the sunny day makes Nick feel positive about his own outlook on life as he embarks on his post-college adulthood.
Other significant quotes dealing with the weather occur during the scene in which Gatsby has asked Nick to arrange a tea party with Daisy. Gatsby is excited by the prospect of seeing Daisy, but the weather is ominous and forebodes the ultimately negative outcome of their renewed relationship. Fitzgerald writes,
The day agreed upon was pouring rain.
Despite the “pouring rain,” Gatsby is nervous about appearances. He wants everything to look perfect when Daisy sees his home and his grounds. Even in the rain he sends a gardener over to mow Nick’s lawn. Gatsby deludes himself into believing that the rain will stop, which implies his self-delusion about how he can steer his life to realize his dreams.
One of the papers said they thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was "The Journal."
The rain is symbolic of several things. First, as noted, it foreshadows the rain that will fall on Gatsby’s relationship with Daisy and, in fact, on Gatsby’s life as a result of his obsession with her. In more mundane terms, it also signifies that it will ruin their tea party that day. However, the rain stops briefly.
"It’s stopped raining."
"Has it?" When he realized what I was talking about, that there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to Daisy.
The news that the rain has stopped prompts joy for both Daisy and Gatsby, but it is short-lived. Finally, after Gatsby has died, Nick thinks about him in terms of rain, which is a symbol again of the rain or heartache that fell on his brief life.
Dimly I heard someone murmur, "Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on," and then the owl-eyed man said, "Amen to that," in a brave voice. We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars.
In the chapter where Daisy and Gatsby are reunited for that terribly awkward tea at Nick's house, there are a great many references to the weather. Nick says that "The day agreed upon was pouring rain." Gatsby says that one of the local papers said that the rain is supposed to stop by 4:00 p.m., just the...
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time of Daisy's projected arrival.
When she does arrive, Gatsby runs out the back door so that he can come to the front door and pretend he's only just arrived. When Nick opens the door for him, "Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water, glaring tragically into [his] eyes." The terrible weather seems to echo Gatsby's agony. He is, at once, nervous and excited and overwhelmed and terrified. He's been waiting so long for this reunion that the feelings seem to take him over.
However, once he and Daisy begin to talk openly to one another, Nick notices that "the sun shone again," (as he has gone outside to give them some privacy). He says, "While the rain continued it had seemed like the murmur of their voices, rising and swelling a little now and then with gusts of emotion." He compares their emotions, here, directly to the weather. Once the air between Gatsby and Daisy clears, so does the weather.
One quote that would be worth using:
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. (Chapter I, pg. 4)
Another quote that is worth considering is when Nick goes to the Buchanans' house for the first time and a breeze is blowing through the room until Tom shuts the windows:
A breeze blew throught he room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. (Chapter I, pg. 8)
And then on the hot day when the group goes to the hotel to escape the heat, the description of the heat segues the discussion from the weather to marriage:
As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the ballroom below.
"Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!" cried Jordan dismally. (Chapter VII, pg. 127)
And one description of the weather references the day Gatsby last spent with Daisy before he left for war:
On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. (Chapter VIII, pg. 150)
And for a final quote, a description of the day on which Gatsby tells Nick that he think Daisy never loved Tom, despite what she said just the day before:
It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement int he air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day. (Chapter VIII, pg. 152)
Hope these help you key into a few places where Fitzgerald uses the weather to indicate the mood of the characters or events, or perhaps the tone of the day for the characters and their lives. Great question!