Annotated Text: A Weather Forecast

A weather forecast is a tiny grammar laboratory. In four sentences a Norwegian værmelding drills the impersonal det (det blir, det kan komme), the s-passive (ventes, meldes — "is expected", "is reported"), all three ways of expressing the future (skal, blir, kommer til å), plus compass directions, place names and temperatures with minus and grader. It is a compact, slightly formal register that you will hear nightly on NRK and read on yr.no. Below is a short, natural forecast. Read it whole with the gloss first, then work through the breakdown.

The text

Værmelding for fredag. I dag blir det skiftende vær i hele landet. På Østlandet blir det først pent og oppholdsvær, men utover ettermiddagen kommer det til å skye til. Det ventes nedbør i sør, og det kan komme litt snø i fjellet. I Nord-Norge meldes det om kraftig vind fra nordvest. Temperaturen kommer til å ligge rundt to grader på dagtid og synke til minus fem om natten. Det skal bli kaldere til helga, og det blir nok behov for vinterdekk i høyden.

And the English:

Weather forecast for Friday. Today there will be changeable weather across the whole country. In Eastern Norway it will first be fair and dry, but as the afternoon goes on it's going to cloud over. Precipitation is expected in the south, and there may be a little snow in the mountains. In Northern Norway, strong winds from the northwest are reported. The temperature is going to lie around two degrees during the day and drop to minus five at night. It will get colder towards the weekend, and there will probably be a need for winter tyres at altitude.

That single paragraph contains nearly every structural feature of the forecast register. Let us unpack them.

The impersonal det: weather has no subject

English weather sentences need a dummy subject — it rains, it's cold, there will be snow. Norwegian does the same with the expletive det (it / there), and the forecast leans on it constantly because weather events have no real doer. The frame det blir + adjective/noun (it'll be / there'll be …) is the workhorse:

This det is not "that" and refers to nothing — it is a grammatical placeholder filling the subject slot, exactly like English it/there in it's snowing / there's snow. Omitting it is a serious error: you cannot say I dag blir skiftende vær — the det is obligatory. (See [syntax/det-expletive] for the full expletive system.)

Notice that when a place or time is fronted — I dag …, På Østlandet …, I fjellet … — the V2 rule forces inversion, so the verb comes before det: I dag *blir det …, På Østlandet **blir det …. The dummy *det still sits right after the verb.

The three futures: blir, kommer til å, skal

Forecasts are predictions, so they showcase all three Norwegian futures — and they are not interchangeable in nuance.

blir (the present of bli, to become) is the most neutral, used for a straightforward "will be":

kommer til å (is going to) expresses a prediction based on present evidence or a developing trend — the clouds you can already see, the front that's moving in. This is the forecaster's go-to for "it's going to happen":

skal in a forecast carries a flavour of what is set to happen / what's forecast — almost reported, "it's supposed to get colder". It often signals information from the forecast itself rather than the speaker's own reckoning:

The error English speakers make is reaching for vil (mapping it onto "will"), but vil in Norwegian leans toward want, and a plain det vil bli kaldt sounds oddly volitional or bookish in a forecast. Stick to blir / kommer til å / skal. (See [verbs/future-overview] for the full comparison and [choosing/skal-vs-vil-future].)

The s-passive: ventes, meldes

The most distinctive feature of the forecast register is the s-passive — the passive formed by simply tacking -s onto the verb stem. It makes the prose impersonal and authoritative: nobody is named as the source, the weather just is reported. Two appear here, both classic forecast verbs:

Mechanically: vente (expect) → ventes (is expected); melde (report) → meldes (is reported). The s-passive is favoured in formal, written and habitual contexts — official notices, instructions, forecasts — which is exactly why it saturates this genre. (A second passive, the bli-passive, is more common in speech; the choice between them is covered in [verbs/s-passive] and [choosing/s-passive-vs-bli-passive].) Note that meldes pairs with om (meldes om vind = winds are reported), and that both passives still keep the dummy det when there is no other subject: Det ventes …, meldes det ….

Compass directions and regions

Forecasts are organised geographically, so the compass and the big regional names are essential vocabulary:

Two idiomatic points. Wind is named by where it comes from: vind fra nordvest (wind from the northwest). And the regional names take the preposition på — på Østlandet, på Vestlandet — but Nord-Norge takes i (i Nord-Norge); these are fixed and worth memorising. (For i versus på with places, see [prepositions/i-pa-place].)

Temperature: grader and minus

Temperatures use grader (degrees) and, below zero, minus:

Three idioms to lock in. The verb for where a value sits is ligge (lie) — temperaturen ligger rundt to grader — not er. Below zero you say minus fem (grader), not "negativ". And the times of day are på dagtid (during the day) and om natten (at night), with om for recurring night-time. Mind the spelling of snø (snow, with ø), regn (rain), and være/vær (be / weather, with æ).

Weather vocabulary and register

A final toolkit of high-frequency forecast words:

The overall register is compact and slightly formal: short clauses, heavy use of det, the s-passive instead of a named subject, nouns like nedbør doing the work that English spreads across a verb phrase. It is the same register as small talk about the weather — a national pastime — but tightened. (For the conversational side, see [expressions/small-talk-weather].)

Grammar breakdown: quick recap

• Weather takes the obligatory dummy det: det blir kaldt, det regner, det kan komme snø; a fronted time/place triggers V2 inversion (I dag blir det…).
• Three futures, not vil: blir (neutral), kommer til å (going to, evidence-based), skal (set to / reported).
• The s-passive (ventes, meldes, varsles) makes the prose impersonal and authoritative — the signature of the genre.
• Geography: compass nord/sør/øst/vest, regions Østlandet (på) vs Nord-Norge (i); wind is named by where it blows fra.
• Temperature uses ligge
  • grader, with minus below zero; på dagtid / om natten for the times of day.
• Spelling to watch: snø, regn, vær/være (æ).