Talking About the Weather in Spanish: 77 Spanish Weather Words (and Phrases) that are Good to Know

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Would you like to learn how to talk about the weather in Spanish? It’s a handy topic because many people use the weather to start a conversation.

• “Nice day today, huh?”
• “I’m enjoying this sunny weather.”
• “I wish the rain would stop.” (And yes, it does rain a lot on the Atlantic coast of Spain, especially in the north)

Weather gives you easy small talk and conversation fillers because everyone can see what’s happening outside. It’s a useful place to start when learning Spanish!

Talking about the weather in Spanish also makes it easy to practise speaking. On most days, you can look out the window and describe the weather aloud, or ask your language exchange partner what it’s like where they live. A lot of online tutors and language exchange partners that I’ve used start a conversation by asking about the weather. You can even set Google to Spanish and ask it for today’s forecast, giving you some extra listening and speaking practice too!

Learning how to talk about the weather is usually among my first topics in a new language because it helps me through an awkward pause when I travel. If I don’t know what else to say, I can mention the heat, the rain or a sudden change, and the conversation often starts moving again.

So let’s learn how to talk about one of the easiest conversation starters: the weather in Spanish.

If you want a clear structure for putting your Spanish into practice, take a look at the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. It’s a 90-day programme with weekly coaching calls, a private community and a focus on speaking from day one.

Spanish Weather Vocabulary

First, let’s learn the words that describe the weather. There are loads of possible conditions, but grouping the words by type makes them easier to memorise.

Spanish Weather Nouns

• Weather: el tiempo
• Sun: el sol
• Clouds: las nubes
• Rain: la lluvia
• Thunder: el trueno
• Lightning flash: el relámpago
• Fog: la niebla
• Snow: la nieve
• Wind: el viento
• Storm: la tormenta
• Sleet: la aguanieve
• Frost: la helada
• Hail: el granizo
• Rainbow: el arcoíris (plural: los arcoíris)
• Breeze: la brisa
• Temperature: la temperatura
• Degrees: los grados
• Season: la estación
• Spring: la primavera
• Summer: el verano
• Autumn or fall: el otoño
• Winter: el invierno

For the atmospheric conditions at a particular place and time, tiempo is the most precise general word. Clima means the usual atmospheric conditions that characterise a region, so it’s closer to “climate”. Context normally makes the other meanings of tiempo, including “time” and grammatical “tense”, clear.

A quick pronunciation note: in most Spanish-speaking regions, the ll in lluvia and llueve is pronounced much like the consonant sound in yo, although the exact sound varies by region. Keep the written accents in words such as frío, húmedo, relámpago and huracán.

Spanish Weather Adjectives and Descriptions

The adjectives below are in their masculine singular dictionary form. Match them to the noun you’re describing, so el día está nublado becomes la mañana está nublada. For immediate conditions, a fixed phrase such as hace calor often sounds more natural than trying to translate an English adjective word for word.

• Sunny: soleado
• Cloudy: nublado
• Windy: ventoso
• Misty: brumoso
• Foggy: neblinoso
• Clear: despejado
• Bad weather: mal tiempo
• Good weather: buen tiempo
• Hot: caluroso
• Cold: frío
• Warm: cálido
• Cool: fresco
• Humid: húmedo
• Bitterly cold or freezing: glacial
• Chilly: fresco

Spanish Weather Verbs and Expressions

• The sun is shining: brilla el sol
• It’s raining: está lloviendo
• It’s snowing: está nevando
• There’s a storm: hay tormenta
• It’s sleeting: está cayendo aguanieve
• It’s drizzling: está lloviznando
• It’s pouring: está lloviendo a cántaros
• It’s hailing: está granizando

Spanish Words for Extreme Weather Conditions

• Hailstorm: la granizada
• Hurricane: el huracán
• Tornado: el tornado
• Blizzard: la tormenta de nieve
• Heat wave: la ola de calor
• Flood: la inundación
• Windstorm or gale: el vendaval

How to Memorise Spanish Weather Words

You’re probably thinking that I’ve shared loads of Spanish weather words, and you’re wondering how you can memorise them. Thankfully, there are some simple memory hacks you can use.

Memory Hack 1: Look for Spanish Weather Cognates

Some Spanish weather words are cognates, which means they resemble a related English word. This makes them easier to remember!

For example, sol for “sun” is related to “solar”, while huracán is close to “hurricane”.

Words such as glacial, torrencial and tornado are also easy to recognise. And aguanieve, meaning “sleet”, describes a mixture of water (agua) and snow (nieve).

Memory Hack 2: Look for Patterns

Instead of memorising a broad spelling rule, learn related word families together: lluvia, llover, llovizna and lloviznar all relate to rain, while nieve and nevar relate to snow.

Memory Hack 3: Focus Your Energies

Instead of trying to learn all the Spanish weather words at once, focus on those you’re most likely to use in real conversations. For example, since I’m from Ireland, when I’m talking about the weather of my home country I’ll talk about la lluvia (“the rain”) a lot, so that’s an important word for me to know.

Memory Hack 4: Use What You’ve Learned in Real Conversations

My number one tip for learning a new language is to Speak from Day One. This will build your confidence and cement what you’ve learned into your memory.

If you’d like to do this, I recommend booking a session with a Spanish Preply tutor. For complete beginners, I recommend starting with my free Speak in a Week course. Just scroll down to the sign-up box at the bottom of this page to join.

Common Spanish Weather Constructions

Spanish weather expressions don’t fit one single “helping verb” rule. The most useful patterns are impersonal phrases with hacer, estar with an adjective or gerund, hay with a noun, and weather verbs such as llover and nevar.

Learn the common expressions as complete chunks because literal translations such as “the weather makes rain” will send you in the wrong direction.

Some weather verbs work on their own in the third person singular:

• It rains: llueve
• It drizzles: llovizna
• It snows: nieva
• It thunders: truena

You can use these as complete sentences. For example, you can look out the window and say, “Llueve.”

Weather Pattern 1: Hacer

Hacer appears in fixed impersonal weather expressions with nouns such as calor, frío, sol and viento, as well as buen tiempo and mal tiempo. It doesn’t pair with every weather word at random.

Treat these as complete phrases rather than translating hacer word for word:

• It’s hot: Hace calor
• It’s cold: Hace frío
• It’s nice weather: Hace buen tiempo
• It’s very bad weather: Hace muy mal tiempo
• It’s sunny: Hace sol

This pattern covers some of the most common everyday weather descriptions, but forms such as llueve, está nublado and hay niebla follow different patterns.

Weather Pattern 2: Estar

For current conditions, you’ll often see está with an adjective, or estar with a gerund for an action in progress. This is more useful than trying to learn ser as “permanent” and estar as “temporary”, a shortcut that breaks down in many real sentences.

• It’s raining heavily: Está lloviendo mucho
• It’s sunny: Está soleado
• It’s cloudy: Está nublado
• It’s very humid: Está muy húmedo

Weather Pattern 3: Hay

The impersonal form hay comes before a noun to say that a weather condition is present. Depending on the English sentence, it may be translated as “there is”, “there are” or simply “it is”.

• There’s a storm: Hay tormenta
• There’s a flood: Hay una inundación
• It’s foggy: Hay niebla
• It’s windy: Hay viento
• There’s snow: Hay nieve

A useful shortcut is hacer with calor, frío, sol, viento and buen or mal tiempo; estar with an adjective or gerund; and hay with a noun. Then learn llueve, nieva, truena and llovizna as complete verbs.

Asking about the Weather in Spanish

Okay, we know how to say some basic things about the current weather. But how do we ask other people?

The most widely useful question is ¿Qué tiempo hace? You’ll also hear fuera for “outside” in Spain and afuera in much of Latin America, so I’ve included both where they sound natural:

• What’s the weather like today?: ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy?
• How is the weather today?: ¿Cómo está el tiempo hoy?
• What’s the weather like outside?: ¿Qué tiempo hace fuera? (Spain) or ¿Cómo está el tiempo afuera? (much of Latin America)
• What’s the weather like in [place]?: ¿Qué tiempo hace en [place]?
• Is it cold outside?: ¿Hace frío fuera? or ¿Hace frío afuera?
• Is it raining outside?: ¿Está lloviendo fuera? or ¿Está lloviendo afuera?
• Is there snow?: ¿Hay nieve?

These questions reuse the same hacer, estar and hay patterns as the statements above.

Spanish Weather Phrases

English has plenty of weather idioms, including “it’s raining cats and dogs”. Spanish has its own phrases too, and you’ll also want to know how to say what the weather feels like to you.

Common Spanish Weather Phrases

Llueve a mares and llueve a cántaros both mean that it’s pouring. They work as natural equivalents of “it’s raining cats and dogs”, so there’s no need to translate the images word for word.

To talk about bitter cold, you might say Hace un frío que pela, an informal expression meaning “It’s freezing!” For intense heat, you can use Hace un calor tremendo.

La primavera, la sangre altera is a current Spanish proverb about the changes in mood, energy and romance associated with spring.

Después de la tempestad, viene la calma means “After the storm comes the calm”. It can refer to literal weather, or encourage someone by saying that a difficult period will pass.

Spanish Phrases to Describe How the Weather Makes You Feel

When you’re making small talk about the weather, you’ll often discuss how it feels. “¡Hace un calor tremendo!” might be followed by Lo sé. ¡Estoy sudando como un pollo! (“I know. I’m sweating like mad!”), an informal expression.

For heat and cold that a person feels, use tener with calor or frío. “Are you feeling hot?” is ¿Tienes calor?, and someone might respond, Sí, tengo calor.

Here are a few other useful phrases:

• Feeling very hot: tengo mucho calor
• Dying of heat: me muero de calor
• Sweating heavily: estoy sudando mucho
• Feeling very cold: tengo mucho frío
• Freezing: me estoy congelando
• Shivering: estoy tiritando
• It’s unbearably hot outside: Fuera hace un calor insoportable (Spain) or Afuera hace un calor insoportable (much of Latin America)
• It’s bitterly cold outside: Fuera hace un frío que pela (informal, especially in Spain)

Mastering Spanish Weather Small Talk

Now it’s over to you! Practise these expressions by describing your daily weather, and you’ll be better prepared for small talk. You can also look up the weather in Spanish, then listen to the forecast or read about it. Hearing native speakers describe real conditions will help the patterns stick. You could even use Instagram to boost your language skills and search for things like “#tiempo” or “#clima”.

If you’re ready to move on to other icebreakers to keep the conversation flowing, make sure to master your questions to ask about others. You can even learn about the other universal small talk topic: Spanish food culture and vocab.