Weather
Weather is the rain, snow and thunderstorms of the Overworld.
The cycle
Rain and thunder each run on a countdown of their own. When a countdown ends, the state flips and a new countdown starts:
| State | Lasts (ticks) |
|---|---|
| Raining | 12,000 to 24,000 |
| Not raining | 12,000 to 180,000 |
| Thundering | 3,600 to 15,600 |
| Not thundering | 12,000 to 180,000 |
A thunderstorm is thunder while it rains. Thunder without rain does nothing.
Rain fades in and out over 100 ticks. Its effects begin 20 ticks into the fade in and end 20 ticks before the fade out finishes.
The weather is the same across the whole world, and is saved with it. The Nether has none.
Sleeping through the night in a bed ends rain and thunder, and starts both clear countdowns afresh.
Biomes
The biome under each column decides what falls there:
| Biome | Weather |
|---|---|
| Rainforest, Swampland, Seasonal Forest, Forest, Savanna, Shrubland, Plains | rain and lightning |
| Taiga, Tundra, Ice Desert | snow |
| Desert | none |
Rain
A space is rained on while it rains, when it is open to the sky, nothing solid or liquid is above it, and its biome gets rain. Snow does not count as rain.
| What | Effect |
|---|---|
| Fire | goes out when it or a space beside it is rained on, unless it burns on netherrack; does not spread into a rained-on space |
| A burning entity | goes out, and does not catch fire; see Damage#Catching fire |
| Farmland | becomes fully wet, as it does beside water |
| Fishing | a bite comes 1 tick in 300, rather than 1 in 500 |
| Sky light | darkened to 12 by day; see Light#Day and night |
Thunderstorms
A thunderstorm darkens the daytime sky to light 10. The game stops counting it as day, so a player can sleep in a bed, and zombies and skeletons do not catch fire.
Hostile mobs spawn as though the sky's darkness were 10, by day or night, which puts a space open to the sky at light 5.
Lightning
During a thunderstorm, each chunk within 9 chunks of a player has a 1 in 100,000 chance each tick of a strike. A lone player in a rainy biome sees about one strike every 14 seconds.
The strike takes a random column of the chunk. It lands in the space above the highest solid or liquid block, and only if that space is rained on. Nothing strikes a snowy biome or a desert.
A strike sets fires, and damages, burns or transforms the entities around the space it lands in.
Snow and ice
In a biome with snow, each chunk within 9 chunks of a player picks one random column 1 tick in 16. Where the block light above that column's highest solid or liquid block is below 10:
- while it snows, a snow layer settles on that block, if it is a full, solid block other than ice;
- if that block is a still water source, it freezes to ice, whatever the weather.
Snow placed when a world is generated follows temperature instead; see World Generation#Snow.