During the French Enlightenment, meteorology developed dynamically because the boundaries of what weather knowledge was and how it should be developed were not clearly defined. To better understand how weather knowledge developed and was legitimized, this dissertation focused on the production, circulation, and applications of meteorological theories about recurrent weather cycles. In particular, it examined the rise and multiple uses of the theory of atmospheric tides during the Enlightenment and Napoleonic periods. This theory, based on Newton's principle of gravitational attraction between celestial bodies, proposed that the moon produced tides in the atmosphere as it did in the sea, which means there are regular variations in the atmosphere. This led meteorologists to look for weather patterns based on the moon's cycles. Based on this study of how ideas about lunar influences on weather captivated French meteorologists from a variety of backgrounds, this dissertation argues that prediction became a major goal of late-Enlightenment French meteorology.