Weather

Weather in Minecraft consists of occasional precipitation and storms that are temporary but global.^[1]

Behavior

The type of weather that occurs depends on several variable factors, including the temperature of the current biome, and the altitude in which it occurs.

Players who have cheats enabled can change the current weather if they wish, using the /weather command. In Bedrock Edition, /toggledownfall also switches to inclement weather, or vice versa.

Weather changing with time can be toggled on or off using the doWeatherCycle game rule. When set to false, the weather stays the same indefinitely, unless altered using the /weather command.

Effects

Inclement weather reduces the sky light level, depending on the severity of the storm. Because of this, villagers return to their homes until the storm passes.

The sky itself darkens, to the point where celestial bodies (including the sun, moon, and stars) are no longer visible. The clouds darken depending on the severity of the weather; note that the clouds themselves do not precipitate. Although the sun is not visible during rain, the glow associated with sunrise and sunset is still visible.

Rain

Rain occurs only in biomes with a temperature of 0.15–0.95. Rainstorms reduce the light level to 12 in full daylight.^[2]

Rain extinguishes fires (including flaming arrows^[3]). However, it does not extinguish fires on netherrack,^[4] and it does not solidify lava. Mobs that are on fire are extinguished on contact with rain; this prevents skeletons and zombies from burning during the day. Conversely, endermen and snow golems may die due to their weakness to water. Endermen teleport randomly until they find a dry place. Blazes and striders that are brought into the Overworld take damage and eventually die from being in contact with rain.

Other interesting effects caused by rain:

• Fish are more abundant during rain.^[5]
• Wolves shake themselves dry if they are not moving (certain versions only).
• Farmland becomes hydrated if it isn't already.^[6]
• Rain fills up cauldrons with water, albeit slowly.

Rain particles make noise when they hit a block, and this noise can be heard at any point within 16 blocks. These particles can be disabled by setting Particles to "Minimal" in the Video Settings menu.‌

Snow

Snowfall occurs only in biomes with a temperature less than 0.15, or above a sufficient altitude. Like rainstorms, snowfall reduces the light level to 12 in full daylight. In Bedrock Edition, leaves gradually take on a frosted appearance once snowfall begins in snowy biomes.

As it snows, snow layers regenerate over all non-transparent blocks.^[7] In Bedrock Edition, these snow layers accumulate and grow over time. Snow does not cover transparent blocks.

Any entities on fire are not extinguished upon contact with snow.

Thunderstorm

Thunderstorms may occur in any biome. They reduce the internal sky light level. At noon the internal sky light level at surface is only 10. However, in mob spawning system, the light level from the sky is treated as if it were 0, allowing hostile mobs to spawn at any time of the day.^[8]

Lightning

Lightning occurs frequently during thunderstorms, if there is rain. It strikes randomly, creating fires where it strikes, igniting any nearby flammable materials, but the rain usually puts the fire out before it can spread. Lightning can strike only blocks that are exposed to the rain. Lightning does not occur naturally in biomes that are too hot or dry to have rain or so cold that it snows instead of rains, but can still be summoned with a channeling trident.

Lightning deals 5HP damage to entities on normal difficulty, not including the damage done by the fire it causes. It turns creepers into charged creepers, villagers into witches, pigs into zombified piglins, and mooshrooms into their brown variants.

Lightning may randomly spawn a "skeleton trap" skeletal horse, with a chance of 3.75–7.5% on Easy, 7.5–20% on Normal, and 11.25–33.75% on Hard, depending on the regional difficulty.

Thunder is a sound that occurs every time lightning strikes. It can be heard by the player up to 160,000 blocks away from the position of the lightning strike. Thunder is heard instantly, regardless the player's distance from the lightning strike itself.

Lightning may be manually summoned with the /summon lightning_bolt command. While it is summoned as an entity, it cannot be referred to by commands or selectors.

If the player throws a trident enchanted with channeling during a thunderstorm, it summons a lightning bolt at the thrown area.

Video

History

This section is missing information about: the possibility that rain/snow textures were originally inverted in-game, as shown in the following forum post: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/archive/legacy-support/1841577-weird-rain-bug - testing in 22w14a did not reveal any such inversion existing, meaning it was likely fixed at some point between 1.2.5 and 22w14a.

 

Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.

Issues

Issues relating to "Weather" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

Trivia

• Rain and snow still falls above the clouds. Notch's explanation is that the gray above the clouds during a storm is “another layer of clouds” and the origin of the rain.^[11]
• Rain and snow are both considered the same weather effect by the game. This explains why there is no /weather snow command.
• Rain and snow actually fall one block into the void (Layer -1). This can be seen in Creative Mode by floating in the Void. No particles are emitted from the rain, due to the absence of a block below it for it to fall on.
• Lightning does not have an image file associated with it. Thus, it is coded directly into the game engine, allowing for dynamic, realistic lightning.
• Helen Zbihlyj created a design document for a scientifically accurate rework of Minecraft's weather system.^[12]

Gallery

Screenshots

• 
  An image of snow and rain from Notch's twitter.
• 
  Rain in the forest biome.
• 
  Snowfall in the taiga biome.
• 
  Lightning during a thunderstorm.
• 
  The boundary between rain and dry weather in a desert in Java Edition.
• 
  Weather darkens the sky to the extent of the sun being hidden from view.
• 
  A timelapse of leaves becoming frosted at the start of snowfall in Bedrock Edition.
• 
  The boundary between rain and snow in Java Edition.
• 
  The transition between snowfall and rainfall in Bedrock Edition.
• 
  The void during a lightning strike.
• 
  The fire that a lightning bolt creates.
• 
  Snow falling on a snowy taiga hills village in Bedrock Edition.

References

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