The weather in Spanish is one of the very first topics our basic students learn on Spanishviaskype.com. The fact is that they can start a conversation in Spanish just saying hoy hace buen día, ¿verdad?. The weather is just an excuse to make contact with your neighbor in the elevator, a stranger at the bar or the person behind you in the queue.

Summer is coming and today, we’ll learn the most basic expressions and verbs to introduce vocabulary about the weather in Spanish.

The weather in Spanish: the verb ‘estar’

The verb estar is often followed by adjectives as we learn in the last article about emotions. When we talk about weather, it’s not an exception. However, this construction is less used in Spanish than in English. Let’s see some of the most used:

  • Está soleado: it’s sunny

  • Está nublado: it’s cloudy

  • Está lluvioso: it’s rainy

  • Está nevado: it’s snowy

 

The verb ‘hacer’ and the weather

The case of the verb hacer is very curious. It’s a transitive verb, so it needs a direct object. In the context of weather, the direct object is the phenomenon itself, so, a noun. Nevertheless, who is the subject? Actually, we consider these sentences as impersonal ones. Maybe a religious person might say that the subject is God, of course. Anyways, we’ll form these verbs to express the weather in Spanish in the third person singular.

  • Hace sol: it’s sunny

  • Hace buen / mal tiempo: it’s good / bad weather

  • Hace calor / frío : it’s hot / cold

  • Hace viento: it’s windy

The weather in Spanish with ‘haber’

Haber is another verb that can introduce the weather in Spanish. However, its usage is more restricted than estar and hacer. In the present, we need to use the impersonal form that we usually learn when we talk about places in the city or describe a house: the form hay followed by a noun. Let’s take a look:

  • Hay niebla: it’s foggy

  • Hay tormenta: there’s a storm

Specific verbs that express the weather in Spanish

Besides the verbs estar, hacer and haber, there are other verbs whose original meaning is the weather itself. They are often used in the present of indicative (expressing the climate of a place) or using the perífrasis verbal estar + gerundio (when we talk about the current weather).

  • Nevar: to snow. En Andalucía no nieva mucho pero hoy en Granada está nevando.

  • Llover: to rain. En el norte de España llueve a menudo; sin embargo, estos días está lloviendo en todo el país.

  • Granizar: to hail. En mi ciudad no graniza nunca, pero hoy tengo mi examen de DELE y está granizando ahora mismo. ¡Qué mala suerte!

Obviously, these expressions about the weather in Spanish are for basic students. If you want to learn harder constructions in order to understand the weatherman, just reserve a trial lesson on Spanishviaskype.com and start speaking about the weather in Spanish… and much more.