When filming on location one of the most important considerations os the weather. Entire production schedules can be built around filming in particular places at particular times in order to take advantage of certain types of weather, or more often, in order to avoid certain types of weather. Having said that, weather can never be completely avoided, and it turns out the original Star Wars trilogy knows that more than most. Not only did parts of the second film have to be reconsidered due to blizzard, but filming was once delayed due to one of the more unlikely rain storms to ever take place.
At the end of the last year some rare footage of the production of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back revealed that a blizzard caused some problems with filming some of the sequence on Hoth, resulting in parts of the movie literally being filmed just outside the hotel where the cast and crew were staying, because they couldn't go anyplace else. However, it seems that weather causing problems was just old hat to the member of the Star Wars team that had been around for the first movie, as apparently, filming of scenes on Tatooine had to be delayed due to rain, something that hadn't happened in the Tunisia desert in 50 years.
One has to assume that when planning a shooting schedule, one does not consider the possibility of rain delays in the desert, and yet, that's exactly what happened when Star Wars: A New Hope began filming. According to Mark Hamill the storm started the first week of filming, and apparently such a storm hadn't happened in the area in five decades. Under those circumstances the blizzard that disrupted the next movie had to be seen as no big deal. That much, at least, was likely seen as a possibility.
But how cool was it to be randomly staying in the same hotel where The Empire Strikes Back cast and crew were and being able to watch the movie film from your balcony? Did people even know what it was they were watching?
Mark Hamill doesn't mention any random weather problems that got in the way of filming The Return of the Jedi, so perhaps that movie was able to get through production without serious problems. No word if they were worried about rain storms when that movie went back to film more in Tunisia.
While these details about filming the original Star Wars trilogy certainly weren't unknown, there are always going to be those fans that were not aware of them. Star Wars continues to find new fans every day, especially now as the franchise continues to grow in new movies and series on Disney+. The older generations are introducing Star Wars to new generations every day, and they'll likely be interested to know about the random occurrences that befell the original productions.
