Learn Hardcore Dutch: Het is zonnig vandaag.

In this sentence, het is a dummy pronoun acting as an impersonal subject. Dutch, like English, uses “it” to talk about weather conditions. There’s no specific noun that het refers to; it simply fills the subject position so you can say “it is sunny.”

Why doesn’t zonnig take an -e ending here, as adjectives sometimes do?

In Dutch, adjectives used predicatively (after a form of zijn like is) remain in their base form. You only add -e when an adjective is attributive—directly modifying a noun with a definite article or in certain gender/case contexts (e.g. de zonnige dag vs. Het is zonnig).

Can I say Vandaag is het zonnig instead? Where can I place vandaag?

Yes. Dutch allows you to move time adverbs like vandaag to the front for emphasis: Vandaag is het zonnig focuses on today. You can also say Het is vandaag zonnig, which is neutral. The V2 word-order rule in Dutch places the finite verb (here is) in second position, so moving vandaag to the front shifts is to slot two.

Do I need to use weer in this sentence, like Het is zonnig weer vandaag?