I’d say all of these women were considered sacrifices by the Sea Folk. During the negotiations with Egwene and the Hall one of the demands they made was the return of the Sisters who were Sea Folk. It was also pretty clear IMO that the Sea Folk deliberately sent meek and weaker women to the Tower to keep the Aes Sedai off their backs, it’s one of the reasons the ONLY people who could be denied “The Gift of Passage” were Aes Sedai. It’s at least implied that these women were also told to not deliberately excel during training too, IIRC Moiraine or Siuan noted that in New Spring the Sea Folk woman who was an Accepted with them even seemed sort of obviously trying to go unnoticed.

Potentially … we know that there is a strong genetic component in the appearance of the ability so there is no ruling out that the Sea Folk essentially bred the Talent into their gene pool over time. I would say that it seems less likely that it’s only flow strength in Air and Water that’s creating this situation since that’s fairly true of almost all women, even the Aiel who one would expect to struggle with Water given their environments. Begs the question of why more Aiel women aren’t strong in Earth 
The issue with Talents has always been the vagueness around how they work. Personally I think RJ did this pretty deliberately to give himself some creative leeway for when he needed something to happen that didn’t fit the existing rules … he could always slap the name “Talent” onto it and didn’t have to explain much beyond.
As a sidenote, The Seanchan foretelling was always an anomaly to me, it implies that even Talents that are seemingly random can be trained, which is at least somewhat backed up by the little pieces we’ve seen from the AoL, but it also seems kind of out of place to me … how would the Seanchan be able to do this with damane when the punishments for misspeaking are so severe? Given the nature of how Seanchan viewed damane why would they even try? From the other women we’ve seen with the Talent it was totally unconscious in how it came to them, Gitata, Elaida, Nicola and Min (assuming that’s what she does) had no way of identifying when it came upon them and in at least Nicola’s case she didn’t even know what she had said. Dreaming seems more like a trainable ability than Foretelling.

I’m not talking about a conscious decision or something she in anyway even realized. I’m saying it’s like the gesture thing. Your first exposure pretty much sets the neural pathways and determines what you can do. In both Elayne and Egwene’s case they first really witnessed Healing as active channelers under circumstances that were stressful and made them think it was practically impossible, imprinting on them an weaker level of ability even though they later had immense strength and skill and all the flow affinity etc necessary to easily perform the weaves.

This actually backs up the point I’m making. When exposed to Jorin her first feelings were amazement/awe and she was excited by the prospect of learning how this was done. Most women are naturally stronger in Air, but clearly not all women are masters at weather manipulation. We know that Aviendha was impressed by all the water and rain etc in the wetlands and essentially first became a channeler right at this same time … maybe that had an effect on her.

I’d say this was Sanderson’s ham-handed way of trying to impress on us that Yukiri was Talented with Traveling. I didn’t say it was a good example 

Maybe, but are the women who care about such things likely to go to the Tower? I’d argue that Aes Sedai don’t exactly attract women who want to do a whole ton to help their communities, most seem pretty much self-absorbed and go to the Tower to gain power in some capacity. Nynaeve’s job was to predict weather, not affect it, there’s a big difference there. If she had suddenly started making it rain or get warmer she was at far greater risk of people figuring out what was going on than a few miraculous cures performed by someone who was trained to heal people. Most Wilders end up with pretty significant blocks that don’t go away until someone beats it out of them (either literally or figuratively), manipulating the weather might crop up from time to time in Wilders, but given how Wilders tend to first come to the Source it seems like we wouldn’t see this unless the circumstances allowed, something like suddenly needing to stop a flood or a tornado or something, seems far less likely than a young girl on the verge of touching the Source desperately wanting the young man to like her or hear what her mother was saying to a friend behind closed doors or help the farmer with a broken arm. All far more likely day-to-day events for the majority of WoT-ers

Not really, the women who are actively trying to conceal that they are using the OP have no trouble hiding it behind herbs and the appearance of some level of mundane training. Ebu Dari Wise Women are famous everywhere for their uncanny abilities, yet no one whispered about the OP for the last thousand years. But if lightning started striking villagers who pissed off the local farm girl you bet your ass folks would start questioning it. Sure it’s possible to hide some of these effects if the individual is doing it with her own full knowledge, but most of these Wilders have no idea that they are even behind what’s going on just as Nynaeve had to be pressed extremely hard to even admit it was a possibility and no one in the Two Rivers ever suspected what she could do, even Tam who had clearly been exposed to Aes Sedai. Her own mentor assumed Nynaeve had given Egwene some form of herbal concoction in desperation.

It actually seems more likely that a male Wilder would be the one to affect the weather since the work that is most effected by the weather would be centered around male tasks such as tending the farm. Despite natural flow strengths male gender roles in agrarian culture lends itself to this IMO. And then there is Rand and his turning to lightning strikes early in his channeling career. Nynaeve didn’t start using lightning until well after she was aware of what she was really doing.
You are probably right about the Tower being an abstract, but not so much so that it wasn’t amongst the first things the Two Rivers children assumed about Moiraine and Lan when they first appeared.

Skimming is a subset of Traveling not a totally different ability. It’s a side effect of knowing the location you were going but not the starting location thus making Traveling impossible without waiting around for hours. I don’t think Rand had to have used the ability at its maximum in his first use, I think the first time simply sets up the limit mentally. He had great need for the ability so it blew open the ability for him mentally thus allowing for a greater capacity than someone who was maybe afraid of the idea of leaving home or someone who was intimidated by the complexity of the weave the first time they saw it.

It was a problem of the second weave limitation. She used her own instinctive weave to create her first gateway but couldn’t recall how she did it, the weave she later used was too similar to what Aviendha had done originally to allow for her to use the new one to full effect, or without applying more strength than necessary to power it. Her thoughts about being certain she could create a larger gateway or use less strength is she could recall her original weave.

That’s a fair point … and one I don’t disagree with … I guess I’m just looking for a mental exercise in WHY they are related. I don’t think it really has much of an effect on the story or the theme’s RJ was hitting, just me trying to wrap my brain around the fact that the relationship exists.

Amen.

Possibly, I’m just extrapolating from the theme of personalities and abilities matching up … Kind of goes together that someone with great medical knowledge and skill would have a much better understanding of how to cause pain in the human body. From what we know of Semirhage she was “long gone” well before the Bore was opened so it seems as though she has had these inclinations for most of her life.

Agreed! I was always on the lookout for more people with strange abilities to be cropping up … instead we got ghosts and weirdo moments in Hinderstap