Meaning of "mittlerweile" - Germany

hey, another quick one here for you helpful people

what exactly does mittlerweile mean? or in what contexts is it used? (am open to the fact there are several contexts!)

if we take rain and sun...
at FIRST i thought it meant..
its "mittlerweile" raining...but in the future it will be sunny
(i.e. mittlerweile is "for the moment...but things will/may change" or along those lines)

but then a german person said it was actually the reverse. so...

it was raining, but "mittlerweile" its sunny.
(i.e. mittlerweile is more "things WERE different but this is the situation [from] now")

i hope i made this clear?!

cheers for the help

in the meantime is the direct translation.. You can't really translate those sentences 1:1 though.. you'd just say:

"it's raining now, but in the future it'll be sunny".. (although I think.. "but it will soon be sunny again.." is better)

"it was raining, but now it's sunny again.."

and so on.

"meanwhile", "since then", "now" and "by now" are the possible meanings according to different contexts that i found through this link :

German To English Translation

yeah i got that too from dictionaries (now, meanwhile etc)
which led me to the conclusion that it meant more "for the moment"...its just the thing this german person said that changed what it could mean and i was wondering if anyone could back her up?

to be long and boring..."for now" suggests things will be different in the future
but her explantion suggests things were different in the past...

and so changes how you use it in a sentence

"Mittlerweile" means "by now". It was raining this morning, but the weather has improved by now. Heute früh hat es geregnet, aber mittlerweile ist das Wetter besser geworden. More info at leo.org.

So in a nutshell, the German you spoke to was right, and your idea of "mittlerweile" was wrong. Sorry 'bout that

i think i can live with that

many thanks