Kanji for Weather: Sun, Rain, Wind & Snow

Check a Japanese weather app for a week and the same handful of kanji do almost all the work. Learn these and forecasts, seasonal small talk, and travel planning all get easier.

Sky, sun and temperature

天気 (tenki) — literally "sky-spirit" — is simply the everyday word for weather. It's the first compound worth memorizing, because it's the word every forecast starts with.

• 晴れ (hare) — clear, sunny. You'll see this on almost every forecast icon.
• 気温 (kion) — air temperature, built from 気 (spirit/air) + 温 (warm).
• 太陽 (taiyou) — the sun itself, using 陽 rather than the more common 日.

Rain, wind and storms

Notice how many of these share the 雨 (rain) radical across the top — 雪 (snow), 雲 (cloud), and 霧 (fog) all put weather literally over your head. Once you recognize that radical, unfamiliar weather kanji stop looking random.

• 曇り (kumori) — cloudy, the third icon you'll see on every forecast after 晴れ and 雨.
• 台風 (taifuu) — typhoon, built from 台 (platform/pedestal) + 風 (wind).
• 雷 (kaminari) — thunder; the kanji itself is a stylized field with lightning striking it.

Why weather kanji reward the effort

天気 is one of the first small-talk topics in any language, and in Japanese it's also a compact lesson in how kanji radicals encode meaning.

Weather vocabulary shows up constantly — in travel apps, in daily conversation openers, and on JLPT reading passages that describe a season or a trip. A dozen characters here go a long way.