Дождь идёт с утра.

Yes, идёт literally means goes / is going from the verb идти. But in Russian, this verb is also commonly used with weather, especially rain and snow:

• Дождь идёт. — It’s raining.
• Снег идёт. — It’s snowing.

So in this sentence, Russian uses the idea the rain is going/falling, where English uses the verb to rain.

Russian usually prefers the noun + verb pattern:

• идёт дождь — it is raining
• идёт снег — it is snowing

There are verbs related to rain, but they are much less common in everyday speech for simple statements like this. For a learner, the natural standard expression is дождь идёт or идёт дождь.

Утра is genitive singular of утро (morning).

It is genitive because the preposition с can mean from / since, and when it has that meaning, it takes the genitive:

• с утра — since morning / from the morning
• с понедельника — since Monday
• с января — since January

So с утра literally means from morning.

In this sentence, it means since morning.

So:

• Дождь идёт с утра. — It has been raining since morning.

This is different from утром, which usually means in the morning:

• Утром шёл дождь. — It rained in the morning.

That contrast is important:

• с утра = starting in the morning and continuing
• утром = at some time during the morning

Russian often uses the present tense for an action that started earlier and is still going on now, especially when the time expression makes that clear.

So:

• Дождь идёт с утра.

can correspond to English:

• It has been raining since morning.
• It’s been raining all morning.

Russian does not need a special tense like the English present perfect progressive here. The combination of present tense + с утра already shows an ongoing situation.

Yes. Russian word order is flexible.

You can say:

• Дождь идёт с утра.
• С утра идёт дождь.

Both are correct. The difference is mostly emphasis:

• Дождь идёт с утра. — neutral, starting with rain
• С утра идёт дождь. — emphasizes since morning

English usually relies more on fixed word order; Russian can move things around more freely for focus.

Because дождь is the subject of the sentence.

The structure is:

• дождь — the subject
• идёт — the verb
• с утра — a time expression

So дождь stays in the nominative singular.

Yes. Дождь is a masculine noun.

A useful clue is that many Russian nouns ending in a consonant are masculine. Even though дождь ends in ь, it is still masculine.

Examples:

• сильный дождь — heavy rain
• холодный дождь — cold rain

The adjectives are masculine, which confirms the gender.

This word is tricky for English speakers because of the consonant cluster.

A rough guide:

• дождь sounds approximately like dozhd’
• the жд cluster is pronounced tightly together
• the final ь means the final consonant is softened

You do not pronounce the soft sign ь as a separate sound. It only changes the pronunciation of the consonant before it.

Also, in normal writing, you may see дождь идёт written as дождь идет, because ё is often written as е in Russian texts, even though it is still pronounced yo.

Both verbs are related to motion, but they are used differently.

• идти = to go in one direction / to be going now
• ходить = to go habitually / to move around / to go back and forth

With weather like rain and snow, Russian uses идти, not ходить:

• Дождь идёт. — correct
• Дождь ходит. — incorrect

This is just the standard idiomatic usage.

Идти is imperfective.

That makes sense here because the sentence describes an ongoing process:

• the rain is falling
• it started earlier
• it is still continuing

Russian uses the imperfective for actions in progress and for general processes, so идёт is exactly what you would expect.

Yes. С is a very common preposition with several meanings, depending on context and case.

For example:

• с утра — since morning → genitive
• с другом — with a friend → instrumental
• с работы — from work → genitive

So you cannot translate с with one single English word every time. Here, because it refers to a starting point in time, it means since / from.

Yes, that is also possible.

• Дождь идёт с утра.
• Идёт дождь с утра.

Both are grammatical. Starting with the verb can make the sentence feel a little more descriptive or scene-setting, somewhat like There’s been rain since morning or It’s been raining since morning.

For a learner, Дождь идёт с утра is a very safe, natural version.

Both usually mean it is raining.

The difference is mostly one of focus and style:

• Дождь идёт — focuses first on rain
• Идёт дождь — often sounds a bit more like introducing the situation: rain is falling / it’s raining

In many contexts, they are interchangeable. Russian often changes word order to highlight what is most important in the moment.