Weather Verbs and Expressions

The very first piece of French most learners produce on day one is some version of il pleut (it's raining). Weather is universal small talk, and French has a tightly organized system for talking about it — built entirely around the dummy il (impersonal it) and three structural patterns: bare weather verb, faire + adjective, and il y a + noun. This page covers the system in full: the verbs, their conjugations, the orthographic traps, and the cross-linguistic differences between English and French weather grammar.

The biggest single take-away for English speakers: French weather sentences have no progressive form. Il pleut is both it rains and it is raining. There is no separate construction for the moment-by-moment "right now" reading. Context does the work. This is one of the cleanest cases where French is structurally simpler than English.

The three structural patterns

These three patterns cover essentially all everyday weather talk. Below, each in detail.

Pattern 1: Bare weather verbs

A small set of verbs name specific weather phenomena directly. They are nearly all impersonal-only — they exist only in the il + verb form. You can never say je pleus or nous neigeons; the verbs simply don't have those forms.

Pleuvoir (to rain)

The most defective verb in French. Pleuvoir exists only in the impersonal third-person singular. The full paradigm:

Past participle: plu. Auxiliary in compound tenses: avoir (il a plu).

Note: there are very rare literary/figurative uses where pleuvoir takes a non-il subject — les coups pleuvaient sur lui (blows were raining down on him), les compliments pleuvent (compliments are pouring in). These are figurative extensions; for actual rain, the verb is impersonal-only.

Neiger (to snow)

Regular -er verb, but used only impersonally for actual snow.

Note the spelling change in the imparfait: neigeait with -ge- preserved before a (the e keeps the g soft). This is a regular -er spelling rule applied to verbs ending in -ger (manger → mangeais, voyager → voyageais, neiger → neigeait).

Geler (to freeze) — the spelling trap

Geler belongs to a small but important group of -er verbs that change e → è (with grave accent) before a syllable containing a silent e. The verb is regular in pattern but the accent is non-negotiable.

The crucial distinction: the bare infinitive and forms with a pronounced vowel after the stem keep the regular e — geler, gelait, gelé. Forms where the next syllable contains a silent (mute) e take the grave accent — il gèle (because the -e of gèle is silent), il gèlera (the -le- is silent in pronunciation). The accent marks the open è sound /ɛ/ that the silent following e would otherwise lose.

This pattern is shared by other -eler verbs that don't double the l — acheter, lever, mener, peser, semer. (Some -eler verbs double the l instead — appeler → j'appelle. Two patterns, two strategies for the same vowel-quality problem.)

Tonner (to thunder), grêler (to hail)

Two more impersonal-only weather verbs. Regular conjugations, but used only in the il-form.

Tonner — to thunder.

Grêler — to hail. (Note: the ê with circumflex is part of the spelling — grêler, not greler.)

Less frequent than pleuvoir and neiger but used the same way.

Bruiner, pleuvoter, crachiner — varieties of light rain

A small set of less-used verbs name types of rain.

• Bruiner — to drizzle (light, fine rain). Il bruine (it's drizzling).
• Pleuvoter — to rain lightly / spit. (informal) Il pleuvote.
• Crachiner — to drizzle/sprinkle. (informal, regional)

These are useful for fine-grained weather description but not strictly necessary at A1.

Pattern 2: Faire + adjective/noun

When weather doesn't have its own dedicated verb, French uses faire ("to do/make") with an adjective or noun. Literal translation is roughly "it makes [adjective]" — the metaphorical agent is the weather itself.

The conjugation tracks regular faire: il fait, il faisait, il a fait, il fera, il ferait, qu'il fasse. Note the futur stem fer- (irregular) and the subjonctif fasse.

Faire + temperature

For specific temperatures, the construction is il fait + degree.

The unit degrés is implied or stated. Moins = below zero (moins dix = -10°).

Pattern 3: Il y a + noun

For weather phenomena that are described as things present in the environment — sun, wind, fog, clouds, rain, snow viewed as a substance — French uses il y a + a noun (typically with the partitive article du, de la, des).

The partitive du / de la is mandatory: il y a du vent, not il y a vent. Vent here is treated as an uncountable substance — wind, like water or sugar.

Choosing between patterns

Several weather conditions can be expressed in more than one pattern, with subtle differences.

Don't overthink this — pick whichever pattern feels natural for the weather element in question. Native speakers freely mix.

English vs French weather grammar

Three differences worth flagging.

No progressive — il pleut covers it rains AND it is raining

French has no progressive aspect for weather. Il pleut spans:

• It rains (general/habitual): Il pleut souvent en Bretagne (it rains a lot in Brittany).
• It is raining (right now): Il pleut, prends un parapluie (it's raining — take an umbrella).

Context disambiguates. There is no separate "be -ing" form. (The construction être en train de pleuvoir exists but is rare and emphatic — il est en train de pleuvoir, "it is in the process of raining," used only when one wants to emphasize the ongoing-ness.)

The subject "it" is dummy il, not ce

English speakers sometimes try c'est qui pleut or ce pleut. Wrong. The dummy il is lexically tied to weather verbs and impersonal contexts; ce is a separate demonstrative used for identification (c'est Marie, c'est mon frère).

Some "weather words" don't translate as verbs

English has nominal weather expressions: there's a downpour, there's lightning, there's thunder. French has a mix:

• Il y a un orage — there's a storm.
• Il tonne — there's thunder (verbal).
• Il y a des éclairs — there's lightning. (Note: éclair = lightning bolt; foudre = the lightning that strikes ground.)

Asking about the weather

Two everyday phrasings:

• Quel temps fait-il ? — What's the weather like? (formal/standard inversion)
• Il fait quel temps ? / Il fait quoi dehors ? — What's the weather? (informal)

The noun le temps has two French meanings — time and weather. Context distinguishes: quel temps fait-il = weather; quel temps as-tu / combien de temps = time.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Using c'est instead of il fait / il pleut.

C'est froid is fine for it (this object) is cold — cette soupe est froide, c'est froid, le café. For weather, il fait.

Mistake 2: Forgetting the grave on il gèle.

The è is part of the spelling. Without it, the form is wrong.

Mistake 3: Conjugating pleuvoir in non-il forms.

Pleuvoir exists only in the dummy-il form, across all tenses.

Mistake 4: Using the present continuous calque.

Il pleut alone is sufficient and standard. The en train de form is reserved for emphatic or stylistic uses.

Mistake 5: Forgetting the partitive in il y a + weather noun.

The du is required: weather elements are conceived as substances.

Mistake 6: Saying le temps est beau for the weather is nice.

Le temps est beau is occasionally heard in formal/literary register, but everyday French uses il fait beau.

Mistake 7: Confusing il fait beau with il est beau.

Il est beau with referential il describes a person; il fait beau with dummy il describes the weather. The auxiliary verb (être vs faire) is the lexical marker.

Key takeaways

French weather has three structural patterns: bare verb (il pleut, il neige, il gèle), faire + adjective/noun (il fait beau, il fait froid, il fait du vent — less common with du), and il y a + noun (il y a du soleil, il y a du vent, il y a des nuages). All three use the dummy il as subject — an il that doesn't refer to anything, parallel to English dummy it.

The defective verb pleuvoir is the most extreme case of impersonal-only conjugation in French: it exists only in the il-form across every tense (il pleut, il pleuvait, il a plu, il pleuvra, qu'il pleuve). Falloir behaves the same way for necessity — see overview.

The grave accent on il gèle is a real spelling rule, not a typo: e → è before a syllable with a silent e. The same rule produces il achète, il lève, il mène, il pèse, il sème. Get this right early; it affects a small but everyday-relevant set of verbs.

Finally, the absence of a progressive form — il pleut is both it rains and it is raining — is one of the points where French is structurally simpler than English. Lean into it. Don't try to import be -ing into a French sentence; the bare present is doing the work.