Text: A Weather Forecast | Finnish Grammar

The säätiedotus — the daily broadcast weather forecast — is a fixture of Finnish life, and it is built from a few grammatical patterns that repeat almost every day. The most striking, to a speaker of English, is that Finnish weather has no "it": you do not say "it rains", you just say Sataa ("rains"), a zero-subject clause with no dummy pronoun at all. What is falling — rain, snow — turns up not as a subject but as a partitive object (sataa vettä, sataa lunta). Add to that the present tense doing future duty (tomorrow's weather is described with plain present verbs), region names in the interior cases (Lapissa, Etelä-Suomessa), and the frozen time-word huomenna ("tomorrow"), and you have almost the whole forecast. Read it through, then take it sentence by sentence.

The forecast

Huomenna sää on koko maassa epävakainen. Etelä-Suomessa sataa vettä aamupäivällä, mutta iltaa kohti poutaantuu. Keski-Suomessa on pilvistä ja tuulista, ja lämpötila jää muutamaan asteeseen. Pohjois-Suomessa sataa lunta, ja Lapissa on paikoin kovaa pakkasta, jopa viisitoista astetta. Loppuviikosta sää lauhtuu ja aurinko paistaa lähes koko maassa.

Grammar in action

Sentence 1: Huomenna sää on koko maassa epävakainen.

Huomenna — "tomorrow", a frozen essive (historically the essive of an old word for "morning"); it is simply the fixed adverb for tomorrow. See dates and time words.
sää on ... epävakainen — "the weather is ... unsettled". The verb is the plain present on, yet it describes tomorrow: Finnish has no separate future tense, so the present covers it. See the weather vocabulary and phrases.
koko maassa — "across the whole country", the inessive maassa ("in the country"). This sentence does have a subject (sää), a useful baseline before the subjectless clauses that follow.

Huomenna sää on koko maassa epävakainen.

Tomorrow the weather will be unsettled across the whole country.

Sentence 2: Etelä-Suomessa sataa vettä aamupäivällä, mutta iltaa kohti poutaantuu.

Etelä-Suomessa — "in Southern Finland", the region name in the inessive (Etelä-Suomi → Etelä-Suomessa). Finnish regions and most country/area names take the interior cases. See the inessive.
sataa vettä — "it rains (water)". This is the archetypal zero-subject weather clause: sataa has no subject at all, and vettä ("water", partitive) is the object of the rain, not its subject. There is no "it" and there is no nominative vesi. See zero-subject sentences and mass nouns in the partitive.
iltaa kohti poutaantuu — "toward evening it clears up". Again subjectless: poutaantuu (from pouta, "dry, clear weather") simply means "the weather turns dry", no pronoun needed.

Etelä-Suomessa sataa vettä aamupäivällä, mutta iltaa kohti poutaantuu.

In Southern Finland it will rain in the morning, but it clears up toward evening.

💡

Finnish weather has no "it". English forces a dummy subject: "it is raining". Finnish forbids it — the verb stands alone: Sataa ("[it] rains"), Pakastaa ("[it] is freezing"), Poutaantuu ("[it] clears up"). And what falls is an object, not a subject: sataa vettä (rain), sataa lunta (snow), both partitive. Never say ❌ se sataa; the correct clause is simply ✅ sataa.

Sentence 3: Keski-Suomessa on pilvistä ja tuulista, ja lämpötila jää muutamaan asteeseen.

Keski-Suomessa on pilvistä ja tuulista — "in Central Finland it is cloudy and windy". Another zero-subject clause: on ("is") with no subject, and the predicate adjectives in the partitive singular — pilvistä (from pilvinen), tuulista (from tuulinen). This on pilvistä frame is the standard way to state a general atmospheric state.
lämpötila jää muutamaan asteeseen — "the temperature stays at a few degrees". Here there is a subject, lämpötila; jäädä ("to remain") governs the illative, so "at a few degrees" is muutamaan asteeseen.

Keski-Suomessa on pilvistä ja tuulista, ja lämpötila jää muutamaan asteeseen.

In Central Finland it will be cloudy and windy, and the temperature will stay at a few degrees.

Sentence 4: Pohjois-Suomessa sataa lunta, ja Lapissa on paikoin kovaa pakkasta, jopa viisitoista astetta.

Pohjois-Suomessa sataa lunta — "in Northern Finland it snows". The same zero-subject sataa, now with lunta ("snow", partitive) as its object. Vettä or lunta — the grammar is identical, only the substance changes.
Lapissa on paikoin kovaa pakkasta — "in Lapland there is hard frost in places". Lapissa is the inessive of Lappi (note pp → p: Lappi → Lapissa). on ... kovaa pakkasta is another subjectless state clause, pakkasta ("frost") in the partitive; paikoin means "in places".
jopa viisitoista astetta — "as much as fifteen degrees (of frost)". Astetta is partitive after the number viisitoista.

Pohjois-Suomessa sataa lunta, ja Lapissa on paikoin kovaa pakkasta, jopa viisitoista astetta.

In Northern Finland it will snow, and in Lapland there'll be hard frost in places, as much as minus fifteen.

Sentence 5: Loppuviikosta sää lauhtuu ja aurinko paistaa lähes koko maassa.

Loppuviikosta — "toward the end of the week", an elative used adverbially for time.
sää lauhtuu — "the weather softens / turns milder" (lauhtua), present-as-future again.
aurinko paistaa — "the sun shines". A canonical weather clause that does take a subject (aurinko); note the plain present covering a future forecast. lähes koko maassa — "in almost the whole country", inessive.

Loppuviikosta sää lauhtuu ja aurinko paistaa lähes koko maassa.

Toward the weekend the weather turns milder and the sun shines over almost the whole country.

The same patterns off the air

The forecast's grammar is the grammar of everyday weather talk too. The dummy-subject error is worth drilling as a clean pair, and the zero-subject verbs turn up in ordinary sentences exactly as they do on the broadcast.

❌ Se sataa tänään. ✅ Tänään sataa.

Wrong vs right — Finnish weather takes no dummy 'it'; the verb stands alone (Tänään sataa).

Ulkona sataa lunta, joten ota lämmin takki mukaan.

It's snowing outside, so take a warm coat with you.

Huomenna pakastaa, ja tiet ovat liukkaita aamulla.

Tomorrow it'll freeze, and the roads will be slippery in the morning.

Cultural note

Weather is not small talk in Finland so much as national news. At these latitudes it genuinely governs the day: the kaamos, the polar night when the sun never rises over Lapland, and the first snow (ensilumi) are marked events, and a hard frost figure like –15 in the forecast reorganises how people dress and travel. The säätiedotus after the evening news is watched attentively, and its plain, patterned Finnish — zero-subject verbs, partitive precipitation, present-tense forecasting — is some of the most predictable, and therefore most learnable, language you will hear. For the wider stock of weather expressions, see weather phrases.

Key takeaways

💡

No subject, and precipitation is an object. Weather verbs stand alone — Sataa, Poutaantuu, Pakastaa — with no "it", and what falls is a partitive object, not a subject: sataa vettä, sataa lunta. The state clauses work the same way: on pilvistä, on pakkasta, subjectless with a partitive predicate.

💡

Present tense forecasts the future. Finnish has no future tense, so tomorrow's weather is described entirely in the present: Huomenna sää on epävakainen, aurinko paistaa, sää lauhtuu. The time word (huomenna, loppuviikosta) does the future-pointing.

💡

Regions live in the interior cases.Etelä-Suomessa, Keski-Suomessa, Pohjois-Suomessa, Lapissa — all inessive. You are "in" a region the same way you are in a room, and the case sits directly on the region name.

Now practice Finnish

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Finnish→