Weather and Seasons | Hebrew Grammar

Weather is the first conversation you will have with a stranger in Israel and the last one you will have with a neighbour in the lift, and its Hebrew is unusually easy to say and unusually hard to believe. The sentence you need is two words long, and both of the words English would insist on — the subject and the verb — are simply absent.

חם היום is a whole sentence

English cannot talk about the weather without a subject. Hot today is not a sentence; you have to supply an it that refers to nothing at all, and then an is to attach it to. Hebrew supplies neither. The bare adjective is the predicate, and there is nothing for it to attach to.

חם היום, אולי נשב בפנים עם המזגן?

kham hayóm, ulái neshév bifním im hamazgán?

It's hot today — shall we sit inside with the air conditioning on?

קר בחוץ מהבוקר, כדאי לקחת מעיל.

kar bakhúts mehabóker, kedái lakákhat me'íl

It's been cold out since this morning — worth taking a coat.

נעים בערב, אבל בצוהריים אי אפשר לצאת.

na'ím ba'érev, avál batsohoráyim i efshár latsét

It's pleasant in the evening, but at midday you can't go out.

Why is the adjective in its masculine singular form if there is no subject? Because that is the unmarked shape — the one Hebrew uses when there is nothing to agree with. חם is not agreeing with a hidden masculine noun; it is not agreeing at all. This matters practically: a woman says חם, קר and נעים exactly as a man does, with no ending to choose. The wider construction is on impersonal sentences, and the missing is on Hebrew has no 'am', 'is' or 'are'.

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Resist the urge to fill the gap. The two words English speakers reach for are הוא and זה, and both of them mean something in Hebrew: הוא is he, and זה points at an object you can see. Neither is a dummy — Hebrew simply has no such word, which is why the shortest possible sentence is also the correct one. The pronoun inventory, and why none of it can do this job, is on the personal pronouns.

Past and future put היה back

The gap is only in the present tense. Move the sentence in time and a verb appears — invariably היה in its masculine singular, again because there is no subject to agree with.

היה חם נורא בשבוע שעבר, ופתאום היום נעים.

hayá kham norá bashavúa she'avár, ufit'óm hayóm na'ím

It was unbearably hot last week, and suddenly today it's pleasant.

בערב יהיה קריר, נצא לטיול אחרי שמונה.

ba'érev yihyé karír, netsé letiyúl akharéi shmóne

It'll be cool this evening — let's go out for a walk after eight.

Rain falls; it does not rain

There is no Hebrew verb to rain. Rain is a noun, גשם, and what it does is fall — ירד. The everyday frame puts the verb first and the indefinite noun after it, which is Hebrew's way of introducing something new into the conversation.

ירד גשם כל הלילה והחצר מלאה בוץ.

yarád géshem kol haláyla vehekhatsér mele'á buts

It rained all night and the yard is full of mud.

מתחיל לטפטף, תסגרי את החלונות לפני שנצא.

matkhíl letaftéf, tisgerí et hakhalonót lifnéi shenetsé

It's starting to drizzle — shut the windows before we head out. (to a woman)

The same verb carries snow and hail: יורד שלג, יורד ברד. It does not carry sun or wind, which are simply there — יש שמש, יש רוח — or which act with verbs of their own.

The everyday inventory

Hebrew	Reads	What it is
חַם · קַר	kham · kar	the two bare predicates you need first
נָעִים · קָרִיר · מַחְנִיק	na'ím · karír · makhník	pleasant · chilly · stifling
לַח · לַחוּת	lakh · lakhút	humid; humidity — a singular feminine noun, despite the plural-looking ־ות
גֶּשֶׁם · שֶׁלֶג · בָּרָד	géshem · shéleg · barád	rain · snow · hail — all take ירד
שֶׁמֶשׁ · רוּחַ · עֲרָפֶל	shémesh · rúakh · arafél	sun · wind · fog
בָּהִיר · מְעוּנָּן	bahír · me'unán	clear · cloudy
מַעֲלוֹת · טֶמְפֶּרָטוּרָה	ma'alót · temperatúra	degrees · temperature
מֶזֶג הָאֲוִויר	mézeg ha'avír	the weather — a construct chain, so the article sits on the second word

כמה מעלות אצלכם? פה קופאים מקור.

káma ma'alót etslekhém? po kof'ím mikór

How many degrees is it where you are? We're freezing here.

יש ערפל כבד בכביש, סעי לאט.

yesh arafél kavéd bakvísh, se'í le'át

There's heavy fog on the road — drive slowly. (to a woman)

רוח and שמש: two nouns the dictionaries themselves hedge

Weather talk needs adjectives to agree, and the two commonest weather nouns are the two whose gender is genuinely unsettled. Hebrew Wiktionary gives רוח the gender line זכר ונקבה — masculine and feminine — and שמש the line נקבה בעיקר, גם זכר, "mainly feminine, also masculine".

What that means for you is narrower than it sounds. Everyday Israeli treats both as feminine: רוח חזקה, השמש קופחת. Write the feminine, expect the feminine, and read the dictionaries' hedge as a record of the older layers of the language rather than as licence to toss a coin.

הרוח חזקה היום, אל תשאירי את הכביסה בחוץ.

harúakh khazaká hayóm, al tash'íri et hakvisá bakhúts

The wind's strong today — don't leave the washing outside. (to a woman)

השמש קופחת מאז הצוהריים, בוא נחכה קצת.

hashémesh kofákhat me'áz hatsohoráyim, bo nekhaké ktsat

The sun's been beating down since midday — let's wait a bit. (to a man)

The Israeli year is not four seasons

The four season words exist and every Israeli knows them — חורף, אביב, קיץ, סתיו. But translating spring and autumn straight across gives you sentences that are grammatical and locally uninformative, because the year they describe is not the year outside the window. Israel's climate is Mediterranean: the rain falls in a single wet half of the year and effectively stops for the other half. So the two words that carry real information are חורף, the rainy season, and קיץ, the long dry one — and the useful third term is עונת המעבר, onát hama'avár, "the transition season", which is what a forecast calls the unstable weeks at either end.

החורף פה קצר וגשום, והקיץ ארוך ויבש.

hakhóref po katsár vegashúm, vehakáyits arókh veyavésh

Winter here is short and rainy, and summer is long and dry.

בעונת המעבר אף אחד לא יודע איך להתלבש בבוקר.

be'onát hama'avár af ekhád lo yodéa eikh lehitlabésh babóker

In the between-season nobody knows how to dress in the morning.

A few more words belong to the same reality. שרב sharáv is the hot dry easterly episode; the same thing is also called חמסין khamsín, which Hebrew Wiktionary derives from Arabic خمسين, "fifty", offering two competing explanations of the number without settling between them. And the Tanakh has a pair for the first and last rains of the season, יורה and מלקוש (literary) — Hebrew Wiktionary's first sense of יורה is "the first rain of every winter in Israel", cited to Deuteronomy 11:14. How much use either word gets in a modern bulletin is something this page did not establish, so it claims nothing about it.

שוב שרב, האוויר עומד ואין טיפת רוח.

shuv sharáv, ha'avír oméd ve'éin tipát rúakh

Another sharav — the air is dead still and there isn't a breath of wind.

הגשם הראשון של השנה ירד רק בסוף נובמבר.

hagéshem harishón shel hashaná yarád rak besóf novémber

The first rain of the year didn't come until the end of November.

Two registers, one topic

Weather is the one subject where a learner meets the formal written register early, because forecasts are everywhere. The two vocabularies barely overlap, and mixing them is audible.

Everyday	Forecast (formal)
יורד גשם	צפויים גשמים · ממטרים מקומיים
יהיה יותר קר	ירידה בטמפרטורות
שמש עם קצת עננים	מעונן חלקית
איזה חום	עומסי חום

אמרו ברדיו שיהיה גשם בערב, אז קחי מטרייה.

amrú barádyo sheyihyé géshem ba'érev, az kekhí mitriyá

They said on the radio it'd rain this evening, so take an umbrella. (to a woman — everyday register)

לפי התחזית צפויים ממטרים בצפון בשעות הערב.

lefí hatakhazít tsfuyím mimtarím batsafón bish'ót ha'érev

According to the forecast, showers are expected in the north during the evening. (forecast register)

The whole forecast register — צפוי and its agreement, יחול, ייתכן, the regional map — is taken apart on a weather forecast.

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Weather talk comes in two shapes and they do different work. A question — כמה מעלות היום? — asks for information. An exclamation — איזה חום! · איזה קור! · סוף סוף ירד גשם — asks for nothing and invites agreement instead. Note the grammar of the second: איזה in front of a noun is an intensifier here and not a question word at all, which is why it needs no answer. It is covered at כמה and איזה, and the wider conversational frame at small talk.

Common Mistakes

1. Building the sentence on יש. English there is maps onto יש, and a learner who has been told there is no to be reaches for the next available verb-like word. But יש introduces a noun: יש שמש, יש רוח, יש ערפל. An adjective needs nothing in front of it.

❌ יש חם היום

Incorrect as 'it's hot today' — יש asserts that something exists, and what follows it has to be a noun. חם is an adjective and stands entirely on its own: חם היום.

✅ יש רוח נעימה היום, סוף סוף אפשר לשבת בחוץ.

yesh rúakh ne'imá hayóm, sof sof efshár lashévet bakhúts

There's a nice breeze today — at last you can sit outside. (יש with a noun, which is what it takes)

2. Inserting זה as a dummy subject. זה is a real word and it does a real job: it points. Put it in front of a weather adjective and you have not said it is hot — you have pointed at something and said that that thing is hot. Both sentences below are correct Hebrew and they mean different things.

✅ חם היום, אני לא זזה מהמזגן.

kham hayóm, aní lo zazá mehamazgán

It's hot today — I'm not moving away from the air conditioner. (f. speaker; חם describes the situation)

✅ זה חם, תיזהרי, הרגע הוצאתי את זה מהתנור.

ze kham, tizaharí, haréga hotséti et ze mehatanúr

That's hot — careful, I've just taken it out of the oven. (to a woman; here זה points at a dish)

3. Writing חם where the noun חום is needed. They are one Latin vowel apart, kham and khom, and one is an adjective and the other a noun. חַם is hot; חוֹם is heat — and, of a person, a temperature.

❌ יש לי חם

Incorrect as 'I've got a temperature' — the noun is חום: יש לי חום. חם is the adjective, and the string as written reads as the unrelated noun חָם, a father-in-law.

✅ יש לי חום מאתמול, אני לא מגיעה לעבודה.

yesh li khom me'etmól, aní lo magi'á la'avodá

I've had a temperature since yesterday — I'm not coming in to work. (f. speaker)

4. Making the rain definite when it is news. Both orders below are correct, and they are not interchangeable. ירד גשם — verb first, no article — introduces rain into the conversation. הגשם ירד talks about rain both of you already have in mind.

✅ ירד גשם חזק אתמול בערב, בדיוק כשיצאנו.

yarád géshem khazák etmól ba'érev, bediyúk ksheyatsánu

It rained hard yesterday evening, just as we were leaving. (new information)

✅ הגשם ירד עד הבוקר ורק אז הפסיק.

hagéshem yarád ad habóker verák az hifsík

The rain went on until morning and only then stopped. (rain already under discussion)

Key Takeaways

חם היום and קר בחוץ are complete sentences. There is no subject, no verb, and no dummy word to insert — Hebrew has none to insert.
The adjective appears in its masculine singular because that is the unmarked form, not because it agrees with anything. Men and women say it identically.
The gap is present-tense only: היה חם, יהיה קר, both in the invariable masculine singular.
There is no verb "to rain". Rain, snow and hail all fall: ירד גשם, יורד שלג, יורד ברד. Sun and wind do not — they take יש (יש שמש, יש רוח) or verbs of their own (השמש קופחת).
יש takes a noun. יש שמש, יש רוח, יש ערפל — never an adjective.
Hebrew Wiktionary gives רוח as זכר ונקבה and שמש as נקבה בעיקר, גם זכר. Everyday Israeli settles both as feminine: רוח חזקה, השמש קופחת.
The Israeli year runs on חורף (wet) and קיץ (long and dry), with עונת המעבר for the unstable weeks between. אביב and סתיו are words, not a description of the weather.
שרב and חמסין name the same hot dry episode; Wiktionary derives חמסין from Arabic khamsīn, "fifty".
Everyday and forecast weather vocabulary barely overlap: יורד גשם against צפויים גשמים, יהיה יותר קר against ירידה בטמפרטורות.

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