Weather



Weather was announced at April 7th 2011 and added in the 1.5 update, which was released on April 19th 2011. The type of weather can depend on the biome; snow falls on arctic biomes, while others get rain. Deserts get no precipitation whatsoever. Weather is very rare though and does not occur often. Rain makes the sky darker, blocks out the sun, stars, and moon and causes Wolves to get wet. It also causes crops to grow and will put out fires (except burning netherrack), but it will not cause lava to turn into cobblestone or obsidian. When snowing, ice will grow back and snow will cover the ground where it can reach. There are also occasional dark thunderstorms with lightning during both rain and snow.

History
In early Classic, rain was introduced to the game to test out this feature. It was purely for cosmetic purposes at that time. The mechanics were simple, only testing if there is a block above to shelter the rain. It could be toggled on and off in-game using the F5 key. This feature later vanished when Indev was introduced,.

Minecraft Alpha brought a test for snow. Generating a world during that time brings a 50% chance to get a snowy world, where ice and snow will regenerate. This feature was removed with the introduction of biomes.

Particle effects file for rain and snow were never taken down from the game and has remained as an unused feature. Because of that, mods could easily re-enable this feature.

After Minecraft Beta 1.5's announcement, a preview video was also uploaded onto the TeamMojang YouTube channel showing weather and other future updates. Weather was then introduced the following week.

Rain
In all biomes, exept Tundra and Desert, rain will occasionally fall. Rain will water crop tiles and cause wolves and tamed wolves to become wet. There is also a higher chance of catching fish whilst raining. In addition to this, rain will create a light sound around you while it falls.

Snow
Snow will only fall in the Tundra biome and causes water that does not have a block above it to become ice, as well as covering all blocks in snow with the exception of transparent blocks.

Thunderstorms
Information about thunderstorms was spliced off into a new page. This information can be found here



Effects

 * Ice and snow regrow whilst snowing.

Bugs

 * Occasionally, in an area with many biome changes, the rain will appear to fall onto snow whilst not melting it.
 * Sometimes rain falls in snow biomes.
 * When rain puts out a fire on Advanced OpenGL when dark the area will stay lit.
 * Rain appears to fall while the player is underwater.
 * When lightning strikes, ice, water, portals, rain, snow, and other particles behind it become see through.