Weather



Weather in Minecraft consists of occasional precipitation and storms that are temporary but global.

Behavior
Weather darkens the sky, hiding all celestial bodies (including the sun, stars, and moon) from view. Different weather may occur depending on the biome temperature and the altitude in which it occurs. Regardless of these factors, inclement weather will reduce the light level to 12 in full daylight; severe thunderstorms will darken the land even further, reducing the light level to 10, though the light level from the sky is treated as if it were 5, allowing hostile mobs to spawn. The average storm lasts 0.5 – 1 day, and there is a 0.5 - 7.5 day delay between storms.

Players who have cheats enabled can change the current weather if they wish, by entering one of the following commands:  or, and  to clear the inclement weather. Note that  is the number of seconds that the weather will take place. will also switch to inclement weather, or vice versa.

Rain



 * Occurs in all biomes except snowy and dry biomes.
 * The water from rain showers may hydrate farmland causing crops to grow at a faster rate
 * It will not cool lava into cobblestone or obsidian, but it will extinguish fires (except on burning netherrack).
 * Rain will soak wolves, causing them to shake water off when reaching a dry space.
 * Tamed wolves will run away to seek shelter during a thunderstorm.
 * When fishing in water exposed to rain, the waiting time decreases by 20%.
 * Rain showers and thunderstorms will harm any endermen, blazes, and snow golems who are directly exposed to the rain.
 * The player can hear rain that hits nearby objects within 16 blocks, if all particles are enabled.
 * Exposed cauldrons may slowly fill up with water.
 * Mobs on fire are put out on contact with rain; this prevents skeletons and zombies from burning in daylight.
 * Rain falls through ladders, vines, carpets, redstone repeaters, snow layers, mob heads, flower pots and cobwebs.
 * It is stopped by signs, banners, doors, fence gates, trapdoors, pressure plates, glass panes and iron bars.
 * In Pocket Edition, rain seems to be affected by the wind, i.e the rain appears to fall diagonally and randomly changes direction. It also falls faster.

Snow

 * Occurs only in snowy biomes, and in other biomes above a sufficient altitude.
 * Snowfall covers the top surface of all blocks exposed to the sky with snow, but it does not cover transparent blocks
 * Causes water source blocks connected to another block horizontally to convert into ice blocks.
 * Mobs on fire will not be put out on contact with snow.



Thunderstorm

 * Occurs only during rain and in the same biomes as rain.
 * Villagers will return to their homes until the storm passes.
 * The player can sleep in a bed during a thunderstorm, even if it is daytime, and will wake up when the storm ends.

Lightning

 * Lightning occurs frequently during thunderstorms, but very rarely does it strike the player. It can only strike blocks that are exposed to the rain.
 * It deals damage to entities on normal difficulty, not including the damage done by the fire it causes.
 * It creates fire where it strikes igniting any flammable material, but the rain usually puts the fire out before it can spread.
 * It turns creepers into charged creepers, villagers into witches and pigs into zombie pigmen.
 * Lightning will sometimes spawn a "skeleton trap" skeletal horse. Chance is 3.75–7.5% on Easy, 7.5–20% on Normal, and 11.25–33.75% on Hard, depending on regional difficulty.
 * Lightning will light up the sky and the world of any player within a 512 block radius. This does not affect shadows caused by blocks.
 * Thunder can be heard by the player up to 160,000 blocks away from where the lightning strikes, but it can only strike in loaded chunks.
 * Lightning can be summoned manually with.
 * The lightning entity can't be referred to by commands or selectors.

Trivia

 * Rain and snow will still fall even if you are above the cloud layer. The rain therefore, as can happen in real life, originates in the unreachable upper cloud level.
 * Notch's explanation is that the gray above the clouds during a storm is another layer of clouds and the origin of the rain.
 * Rain and snow are both considered the same weather effect by the game.
 * This explains why there is no command.
 * Raindrops fall at approximately the same speed one can descend while flying. This means that it is actually possible to free fall faster than the rain particles.
 * Rain actually falls one block into the void (Layer -1). This can be seen in Creative Mode by floating in the Void. Note that no particles are emitted from the rain, due to the absence of a block below it.
 * Although you cannot see the sun during inclement weather, the glow associated with sunrise and sunset is still visible.
 * The initial occurrence of rainfall is predetermined per seed. For example, if the first rainfall happens the second day in a new world, and another new world is created with the same seed, it will also happen the second day. After the first rainfall, the rain time is random.
 * The sound that rain makes is generated by the particles of rain reaching the ground, rather than the actual rain event.
 * As a result, one can make the aforementioned sound stop playing by turning the particles setting to minimal in the options menu.
 * Lightning does not have an image file associated with it. Thus, it is coded directly into the game engine, allowing for dynamic, realistic lightning.