The song was written in early 80's, after the Martial State was introduced in Poland to preserve the communist regime as well as to reduce the turmoil due to constant strikes and general chaos, and in order to protect Poland against possible Soviet intervention. A milion people or more emmigrated, Polish economy was in crisis, the political, cultural, social life was limited, as well as there was a curfew. Therefore people would spend their days queuing for hours for even basic products (if there were any) during the day, and watching tv news concerning the political situation in the evenings. I think the weather is not only the literal bad, grew weather, but also the "political" weather, which was just as hopeless.

VITREOUS WEATHER = glass, glassy, weather. The title, glass weather, probably means something like "the weather [forecast watched on the] glass [screen of the tv]". So people would watch weather forecast but also would try to predict the political weather.

CONCRETE VILLAGE - as the communists industrialised Poland a lot, milions of people moved from villages to the cities. It required building a lot of flats cheaply and quickly. So massive concrete plattenbau (out of prefabricated panels) residential quarters were built, often consisting only of giant flats with no infrastructure, sometimes just with a shop. That's why, because of its inhabitants and because of lack of city life, they are called here villages.

BULB - often the corridors were lit only by a naked bulb

IN CAT'S STEPS = stealthily, without a sound and possibly in order to do harm

GREY = not only Polish weather is often grey in general, the concrete flats used to be grey too, and so were the pavements etc. And so was the life.

SORROWFUL MADONNAS, CHAPELS, LORD'S PRAYER = this reminds us of the widespread and nominally deep Catholicism of Poland. The houses are like chapels with crosses etc, the ladies are like Madonnas (images of Virgin Mary), and the word "frasobliwy" (sorrowful) is today used just for a typically Polish rural folk depiction of Jesus, sitting and resting his head on his hands, sad because of the evil of the world.

Still, Polish Catholicism is not very profound, as is mentioned by the way the neighbour says the prayer or by the mentioned of shacking up.

QUEUES = since the economical crisis in the late 70's, there was an increasing lack of even basic products in the shops, sometimes (like butcher shop) were completely empty. Only vinegar and grey toilet paper. Therefore, if something appeared in a shop, people would immediately form a long queue. People would join the lines even if they didn't know what was being sold, just to buy it and exchange for something else later on.

TEA = is very popular in Poland and was available, and there was not much else to drink back then anyway

ABSORBS = I am missing a word, but steep is not it, because one steeps something in a liquid to make this thing change its characteristics, not the other way round, although it is sometimes used that way.

LIFTS' WHIRR = old lifts were quite noisy, as well as dangerous.

LORD'S PRAYER (PATER NOSTER) = actually it may be a set of prayers just beginning with the Lord's Prayer. The verb used for describing saying it means to say it without understanding, without thinking about the meaning.

The last stanza (about rats) is not usually sung, it was deleted from the original recording, but it was used by at least one cover artist later on. Its existance was not known for years, here it's mentioned by the author.

https://www.polskieradio.pl/7/160/Artykul/850392,Autor-Szklanej-pogody-o...

THE CHESS used to be, apart from the checkers and the cards, the only adult game back then.