01 · The core hace pattern
Hace calor.
It's hot.
Hace pairs with a noun, not an adjective — learn the shape of the pattern, not just this one phrase.
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Weather Warrior
Describe sun, rain, and the seasons — and open a real conversation with them, out loud.
Spanish describes weather with hace + noun: hace calor, hace frío, hace sol, hace viento. For a state or something happening right now, switch to está: está nublado, está despejado, está lloviendo. Keep the weather apart from how you feel — tengo frío means I'm cold; hace frío means it's cold outside. And the seasons — la primavera, el verano, el otoño, el invierno — flip south of the equator: in Argentina and Chile, el verano runs December to February.
Below: the weather words lesson by lesson, how locals actually say a drizzle or a scorcher, the classic mix-ups — and a way to learn it all by talking, not flipping flashcards.
The warm-up pack
How the weather actually gets talked about — as small talk, not a forecast.
01 · The core hace pattern
Hace calor.
It's hot.
Hace pairs with a noun, not an adjective — learn the shape of the pattern, not just this one phrase.
02 · The opposite
Hace frío.
It's cold.
Same hace pattern — swap the noun and you've covered both extremes.
03 · Switching to está
Está lloviendo.
It's raining.
Rain in progress takes está, not hace — that's the whole rule, right there.
04 · Describing the sky
Está nublado.
It's cloudy.
Está pairs with descriptions of the sky itself, not with what's falling from it.
05 · The Caribbean compliment
Está rico el día.
What a beautiful day. (Caribbean)
Rico usually means "delicious" — here it just means the day feels good.
06 · The idiom for a rotten day
Hace un día de perros.
It's a lousy day out. (Spain)
Literally "a dog's day" — Spain's vivid way to complain about the weather.
07 · The downpour
Cae un aguacero.
It's pouring. (Mexico)
More dramatic than just "hay tormenta" — this is what you say when it's really coming down.
08 · Emphatic cold
Hace un frío de locos.
It's freezing cold. (Argentina)
De locos is Argentina's intensifier — "crazy cold," said with real feeling.
09 · The drizzle word nobody teaches
Está chipichipi.
It's drizzling. (Mexico)
Mexican slang from Nahuatl — light, repetitive rain, and it sounds exactly like what it describes.
10 · The scorching idiom
El sol está que raja.
The sun is scorching. (Caribbean)
Literally "the sun is splitting" — Caribbean for a brutally hot day.
11 · Closing on a pleasant note
Está haciendo un fresquito rico.
There's a nice cool breeze. (Colombia)
Fresquito, the diminutive, makes it sound as pleasant as it feels — a nice way to end a weather chat.
FLUENT
Finally, someone to talk to in Spanish.
Ten-minute spoken lessons. A teacher who answers back — and gently fixes what you got wrong.
First 10 lessons freeandbefluent.com/spanish/weather-warriorRegional Spanish
Textbooks teach one word. Locals use several — pick your region's and stay consistent.
Watch out
The part no drill site can do
Olivia
Your vocabulary teacher for this pack
Weather is the world's favorite conversation opener, so that's exactly how Olivia teaches it — no flashcards, no picture-matching. She starts the small talk the way a neighbor would — ¿qué tal el día? — and you answer with what's really outside your window: hace sol, está lloviendo, or hace un calorón when it's brutal. Then she asks about the seasons where you live, and you compare el verano with el invierno, degree by degree — out loud, in a real exchange, until reaching for the words is automatic.
Blank mid-sentence and nothing bad happens — she waits. That's the practice, without unnecessary judgement.
Finish the 5 lessons and Weather Warrior is yours — earned, not given.
First 10 lessons free · 10-minute spoken lessons · your AI coaching team remembers you
Quick answers
Hace pairs with nouns — hace calor, hace sol, hace viento. Está pairs with descriptions and things in progress — está nublado, está lloviendo. Never ser: weather is temporary, so it takes estar.
Hace calor is about the world — it's hot outside. Tengo calor is about you — I feel hot. Mix them up and you've moved the heat from the street into your body; keep hace for weather, tengo for feelings.
Rain in progress is está lloviendo. For a light drizzle, Colombia says está lloviznando, Argentina está garuando, and Mexico has the wonderful está chipichipi. A sudden downpour is cae un aguacero.
La primavera (spring), el verano (summer), el otoño (autumn), el invierno (winter). In Argentina and Chile they flip — summer is December to February — and in tropical Mexico people talk about temporada de lluvias, the rainy season, more than autumn.
Open the way locals do: ¿qué tal el día? works across Latin America, Mexico drops a casual qué clima, and in the Caribbean a beautiful day is está rico el día. Answer with one condition — hace sol — then ask something back to keep it going.