Weather Expressions

Brazilian weather talk has one rule that overrides everything else for English speakers: there is no subject. English says "it's hot," "it's raining," "it's getting cold" — always with a dummy "it." Portuguese drops that "it" entirely. You say Tá calor, Tá chovendo, Tá esfriando. Once you internalize the subjectless pattern, the rest is just learning the vivid fixed phrases Brazilians use to complain about the heat and the rain.

The core rule: no dummy subject

In English, weather verbs need a grammatical placeholder: it rains, it is hot. That "it" refers to nothing — it's there only because English sentences require a subject. Portuguese has no such requirement. Weather expressions are genuinely subjectless (impersonal), and inserting a pronoun for "it" is an error.

There is no word for "it" in either sentence. Tá (spoken está) and começou stand alone. Trying to say ele tá calor ("it is hot") is wrong — there is nothing for ele to refer to.

Three verbs do most of the work: estar, fazer, haver

Brazilian weather divides between two main patterns.

Estar (tá...) for current conditions and things in progress — the most common in speech:

Notice tá calor / tá frio use the adjective-like nouns calor (heat) and frio (cold) directly after estar. And tá chovendo / tá fazendo sol use the gerund (progressive) for weather in progress.

Fazer (faz...) for general or habitual conditions, especially temperature — this is the impersonal fazer of weather:

Faz frio / faz calor describes the climate as a standing fact; tá frio / tá calor describes how it feels right now. Both are subjectless.

Haver / ter for "there is/was" weather events:

In speech teve (ter) usually replaces the more formal houve (haver) for "there was."

Vivid fixed exclamations

Brazilian weather complaints lean heavily on punchy fixed phrases. These are the ones that make you sound native.

Que calor! / Que frio! ("so hot/cold!") is the basic exclamation. Tá um forno ("it's an oven") is the standard hyperbole for stifling heat. Tá congelando ("it's freezing") for extreme cold. Tá abafado describes muggy, stuffy, no-breeze heat:

And the blazing-sun classic, sol de rachar (literally "sun fit to split [the earth]"):

Rain vocabulary, from drizzle to downpour

Brazilians distinguish degrees of rain with fixed expressions:

Garoar / tá garoando = a fine drizzle. Cair um temporal / cair uma chuva (literally "a storm/rain fell") = a downpour hit. The verb cair ("to fall") for sudden heavy rain is fully idiomatic.

Predicting weather: "vai chover"

For "it's going to rain," use the simple periphrastic future vai + infinitive — still subjectless:

Vai chover, vai esfriar, vai fazer sol — no subject anywhere.

The diminutive friozinho ("a nice little chill") deserves a note: Brazilians use it affectionately for pleasant, mild cold, often welcomed:

How this differs from English

The entire difference is the dummy subject. English grammar forces a meaningless "it" into every weather sentence; Portuguese forbids it. This is the same impersonal logic behind Tem muita gente ("there are a lot of people") and Faz dois anos ("it's been two years") — Portuguese is comfortable with subjectless sentences in a way English is not. A second difference: English uses one verb ("to be") for almost all weather, whereas Portuguese splits between estar (now), fazer (general climate), and cair/ter (events). Mapping all of them onto "to be" produces unnatural sentences like é frio for "it's cold today."

Common Mistakes

Drop the pronoun entirely. Weather verbs stand alone.

For current weather use estar (tá frio), not ser. Ser frio would describe a personality (a cold person) or an inherent property.

Careful: tá calor describes the weather, but YOUR feeling of being hot is tô com calor (estar com). Don't confuse the environmental and personal versions.

Rain in progress takes estar + gerund (tá chovendo), not fazer. Fazer pairs with nouns/conditions: faz sol, faz frio, faz calor.

For ambient heat Brazilians say tá calor; quente describes a hot object (hot coffee, a hot stove), not the weather in general.

Key Takeaways

• Weather is subjectless: drop the English "it." Tá chovendo, not ele está chovendo.
• Estar (tá) for current/in-progress weather; fazer (faz) for general climate; cair/ter for events.
• Use estar not ser for today's weather; tá frio, never é frio.
• Distinguish ambient tá calor (weather) from personal tô com calor (I feel hot).
• Vivid fixed exclamations — que calor!, tá um forno, sol de rachar, tá abafado — make you sound native.