Weather in Italian: vocabulary, verbs and expressions

Talking about the weather comes up almost as often in Italian as in English, whether to strike up a conversation or to plan an outing. The construction changes, however, depending on whether you use the verb fare, an impersonal verb, or a simple phrase with c’è.

Asking the question: Che tempo fa?

Che tempo fa? remains the basic question for asking what the weather is like, in the present tense or for a specific place.

Italian	English
Che tempo fa a Napoli oggi?	What’s the weather like in Naples today?
Che tempo farà domani?	What will the weather be like tomorrow?
Com’è il tempo?	How’s the weather?

Describing the weather with fare

The verb fare (to make/do), always conjugated in the third person singular, is used to describe most weather conditions.

Italian	English
Fa bel tempo	It’s nice weather
Fa brutto tempo	It’s bad weather
Fa caldo	It’s hot
Fa freddo	It’s cold

Fa un caldo torrido in agosto.
It’s scorching hot in August.

Impersonal verbs: piove, nevica

Piovere (to rain) and nevicare (to snow) are conjugated without any subject pronoun, exactly like fa. Adding “esso” or any other pronoun before them would be a mistake.

Italian	English
Piove da stamattina.	It’s been raining since this morning.
Nevica sulle montagne.	It’s snowing on the mountains.
Tira vento.	It’s windy.

Sky and precipitation vocabulary

Italian	English
il sole	the sun
la pioggia	the rain
la neve	the snow
il vento	the wind
la nuvola / le nuvole	the cloud / the clouds
la nebbia	the fog
il temporale	the thunderstorm
l’arcobaleno	the rainbow
il cielo sereno	the clear sky
il cielo nuvoloso	the cloudy sky

Giving a temperature

To specify a number of degrees, Italian uses the verb esserci (there is/are) rather than a direct construction with fare.

Ci sono trenta gradi all’ombra.
It’s thirty degrees in the shade.

The numbers follow the usual logic of Italian numbers, with no peculiarities specific to the weather.

Tempo or ora: a classic trap

Tempo refers both to meteorological weather and to passing time. To ask for the time of day, however, Italian uses a different word: ora.

Question	Meaning
Che tempo fa?	What’s the weather like? (weather)
Che ora è?	What time is it?

Confusing the two questions remains common among beginners, whereas a native speaker would never mix them up.

Talking about the weather in the past

The auxiliary verb changes depending on the type of verb used. With fare, only avere is correct. With impersonal verbs like piovere and nevicare, both auxiliaries are accepted, with no difference in meaning.

Construction	Example	Translation
Fare + avere (mandatory)	Ha fatto un caldo incredibile la settimana scorsa.	It was incredibly hot last week.
Piovere + essere or avere	È piovuto tutto il weekend. / Ha piovuto tutto il weekend.	It rained all weekend.

Idiomatic expressions about the weather

Expression	Meaning	Example
Fa un freddo cane	It’s freezing cold (lit. dog cold)	Fa un freddo cane, meglio restare a casa stasera.
Piove a catinelle	It’s raining cats and dogs (lit. raining in basins)	Piove a catinelle da questa mattina, meglio non uscire.

An old saying sums up the art of reading the sky before a storm: “Cielo a pecorelle, acqua a catinelle” (mackerel sky, rain on the way). This vocabulary naturally complements that of Italian seasons, as the weather varies greatly from one season to another across the peninsula.