In this paper we study some remarkable semisimple elements of an (extended) Chevalley group that are diagonalizable over the ground field -the 'weight elements'. In particular, we calculate the Bruhat decomposition of microweight elements. Results of the present paper are crucial for the description of overgroups of split maximal tori in Chevalley groups.The paper is devoted to a detailed study of the most important and, in general, the simplest semisimple elements in Chevalley groups G = G(Φ, K), namely, of the long root type elements gh α (ε)g −1 , where the root α is long, ε ∈ K * , and g ∈ G. We furnish detailed proofs of all previously announced results related to these elements. Letbe a long root torus. Let us fix a Borel subgroup B = B(Φ, K) and let U = U (Φ, K) be its unipotent radical. We prove a strong version of reduction to D 4 , asserting that there exists u ∈ U such that uQu −1 is contained in a Chevalley subgroup G(Δ, K) of type Δ ≤ Φ, where Δ is a twisted subsystem of D 4 . It turns out that all elements gh α (ε)g −1 , ε ∈ K * , apart from the identity element, and at most two further ones, lie in the same typical Bruhat cell Bw 0 B. In other words, there exist at most one element θ = 1 such that gh α (θ)g −1 ∈ BwB and gh α (θ −1 )g −1 ∈ Bw −1 B for some w = w 0 . Further, we reproduce -hitherto unpublished! -complete proofs of the results from the Thesis of the second author, on the number and depth of degenerations. In particular, we prove all results announced in [28,80], and, in fact, get sharper results, producing explicit lists of possible degenerations. Before, such lists were only available for the two simplest cases where Φ = A l and Φ = C l . These results are instrumental in the work of the first author and Vladimir Nesterov, devoted to the description of orbits of Chevalley groups on pairs of long root tori. download from IP 130.102.42.98. License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see http://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use 388 N. A. VAVILOV AND A. A. SEMENOV 1 As a scientometric curiosity, let us mention that the English translation, and thus also all usual databases, erroneously indicate A. V. Yakovlev as the author of [44]. Licensed to University of Queensland. Prepared on Sun Jun 14 08:50:17 EDT 2015 for download from IP 130.102.42.98. License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see http://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use LONG ROOT TORI 389we correct a couple of petty inaccuracies 2 in the analysis of the cases where Φ = B l , F 4 . Therefore, we opted for inclusion of all details of calculations. Actually, one could write the proof in a more uniform way, skipping some of the case by case analysis, but a thorough understanding of the arising unipotent radicals is interesting in itself and is of vital importance for future applications, in particular, in the forthcoming papers by the first author and Vladimir Nesterov. Therefore, we decided to present all details for each case.From a technical viewpoint, Theorem 1 amounts to describing the Bor...