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.
Say this
Regional 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.
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.