The short version
- Most weather in Spanish uses one of three verbs: hace (hace calor), está (está nublado) or hay (hay niebla).
- Rain and snow have their own verbs: llueve and nieva.
- For a real conversation, go beyond the weather itself: compare it with home, talk about plans, and complain a bit. Everyone does.
If you spend a summer in Spain, ¡Qué calor! might be the sentence you say most often. The weather in Spanish comes up everywhere: in the lift, at the bakery, at the start of work calls, on the phone to your mother-in-law. It's safe, everyone has an opinion on it, and it's a good way to get a conversation started.
The grammar is where learners get stuck. English uses "it's" for almost everything: it's hot, it's cloudy, it's raining. Spanish uses different verbs depending on the type of weather, and if you use the wrong one it sounds odd straight away.
Once you know which verb goes with what, the rest is just vocabulary.
Hace, está or hay?
This is the part to get right first. Nearly all weather phrases follow one of these patterns.
| Pattern | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| Hace | Hace + noun | Hace calor. Hace frío. Hace sol. Hace viento. Hace buen tiempo. |
| Está | Está + adjective | Está nublado. Está despejado. Está soleado. |
| Hay | Hay + noun (things in the sky or air) | Hay niebla. Hay tormenta. Hay nubes. |
Hace is the one you'll use most. It literally means "it makes", so hace calor is "it makes heat". Strange in English, but it's how Spanish works, and it covers temperature, sun and wind.
Está goes with adjectives that describe the sky: cloudy, clear, sunny.
Hay is "there is", so hay niebla is "there's fog". Use it for things you could point at. There's a full post on how to use hay in Spanish if you want more on this verb.
Rain and snow are different again. They have their own verbs: llueve (it rains, it's raining) and nieva (it snows). To say it's raining right now, está lloviendo is the most common.
Hace calor means the weather is hot. Tengo calor means you feel hot. Estoy caliente does not mean you're warm, and can mean something quite different, so avoid it. The same goes for cold: hace frío (the weather) and tengo frío (you).
Everyday weather phrases
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Qué tiempo hace? | What's the weather like? |
| Hace buen tiempo. / Hace mal tiempo. | The weather's nice. / The weather's bad. |
| Hace un día precioso. | It's a lovely day. |
| Hace mucho calor. / Hace mucho frío. | It's very hot. / It's very cold. |
| Hace fresco. | It's chilly. / It's cool. |
| Hace mucho viento. | It's very windy. |
| Está nublado. | It's cloudy. |
| Está lloviendo. | It's raining. |
| Llueve mucho aquí. | It rains a lot here. |
| Hay niebla. | It's foggy. |
| Hay tormenta. | There's a storm. |
| Hay mucha humedad. | It's very humid. |
Tiempo means both "weather" and "time", so ¿Qué tiempo hace? is about the weather, and ¿Tienes tiempo? is about time. Context makes it clear.
Use mucho with nouns: hace mucho calor, hace mucho viento. Learners often say hace muy calor, but calor is a noun, so it needs mucho. With the adjectives it's muy: está muy nublado.
Temperatures and forecasts
Spain uses degrees Celsius, and there are two common ways to say the temperature.
- Hace treinta grados. (It's thirty degrees.)
- Estamos a treinta grados. (It's thirty degrees. Literally "we're at thirty degrees".)
- Estamos a dos bajo cero. (It's minus two.)
- Mañana van a subir las temperaturas. (Temperatures are going up tomorrow.)
For the forecast, you'll hear el tiempo (the weather report) and la previsión (the forecast). But in conversation, people mostly just say what they've heard, and dicen que does all the work.
- Dicen que va a llover.They say it's going to rain.
- Dicen que va a llover el fin de semana.They say it's going to rain at the weekend.
- Dicen que va a llover el fin de semana, así que no sé si ir a la playa.They say it's going to rain at the weekend, so I don't know whether to go to the beach.
- Dicen que va a llover el fin de semana, así que no sé si ir a la playa. ¿Tú qué vas a hacer?They say it's going to rain at the weekend, so I don't know whether to go to the beach. What are you going to do?
That last line is the important bit. The weather on its own is a two-line chat. Link it to plans and ask a question, and you've got a proper conversation.
Weather words you'll hear in Spain
Spain has a few weather words that learners often don't meet in textbooks, and you'll hear them on the news and in the street every year.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| la ola de calor | the heatwave |
| el bochorno | muggy, heavy heat |
| la calima | haze from dust in the air (often from the Sahara) |
| la gota fría / la DANA | a severe storm system with heavy rain, usually in autumn |
| el granizo | hail |
| la helada | frost |
| el aviso amarillo / naranja / rojo | yellow / orange / red weather warning |
La DANA became a very common term in Spain in recent years, and many people still call it la gota fría. When there's a weather warning, it's worth checking official sources and local news, especially in autumn on the Mediterranean coast.
Hace un frío que pela (It's freezing) and Llueve a cántaros (It's pouring) are common and easy to learn. You'll also hear ¡Qué solazo! for strong sun, and Hace un calor que te mueres for serious heat. In Madrid, people like to quote an old saying about the city's climate: nueve meses de invierno y tres de infierno (nine months of winter and three of hell).
Turning weather into a conversation
In Spain, weather small talk is often a shared complaint. It's too hot, it's too windy, it hasn't rained for months. The replies are usually quick reactions: ¡Ya ves! (I know!), ¡Madre mía! (Oh my god!), Pues sí (It really is). There are more of these in Spanish reactions: qué bien, vaya, madre mía and more.
Here's how a short weather chat can turn into something longer:
That conversation started with the weather and ended up on where you're from and why you moved. That's what weather small talk is for. For more on these short chats, see Spanish small talk with your neighbours.
People in Spain will ask what the weather's like where you're from. Prepare it now. Say five sentences out loud comparing your home town with where you live, or want to live, in Spain. En Leeds llueve mucho más que aquí. En invierno hace más frío. En verano no hace tanto calor como aquí. Comparing means you use más que, menos que and tanto como, which you'll need for plenty of other topics too.
Common mistakes
Es frío or Está calor.
Hace frío, Hace calor.
Estoy frío when you mean you feel cold.
Tengo frío.
Hace muy calor.
Hace mucho calor. Calor is a noun.
Hace nublado.
Está nublado.
Stopping after one weather comment.
Link it to plans or ask ¿Y allí qué tiempo hace?
Recap
- Hace for temperature, sun and wind. Está for how the sky looks. Hay for fog, storms and clouds.
- Rain and snow have their own verbs: llueve, nieva.
- Hace calor is the weather. Tengo calor is you.
- Use dicen que to talk about the forecast.
- Link the weather to plans or to home so the chat keeps going.
100 Spanish Conversations covers everyday themes like this one week at a time, with the words and sentence patterns ready to practise out loud. If you want to tell someone how cold it is in your part of the world, the Skool community is full of people in different climates.
Leeroy studied Spanish for years before moving to Spain and finding he couldn't hold a conversation. He built Basically Spanish around the method that fixed it. Questions? leeroy@basicallyspanish.com