Precipitation beginning to settle at the present time (4)
I believe the answer is:
snow
'precipitation' is the definition.
(snow is a kind of precipitation)
'beginning to settle at the present time' is the wordplay.
'beginning to' indicates taking the first letters.
'at' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'the present time' becomes 'now' (I've seen this before**).
The initial letter of 'settle' is 's'.
's'+'now'='SNOW'
(Other definitions for snow that I've seen before include "Weather feature" , "Frozen flakes" , "that may come at Christmas" , "feature of 27 [THE BIG FREEZE]" , "Wintry precipitation" .)