Weather: hace + noun, hay + noun, está + adj
Spanish does not use "to be" for most weather. Learn each phrase by its impersonal verb. hace + noun: hace sol, hace calor, hace frío, hace viento. hay + noun: hay niebla, hay tormenta, hay nubes. está + adjective (masculine singular): está nublado, está despejado, está lloviendo. The families never swap: es sol and tiene sol are both wrong. Full table in the note.
Seasons and climate/environment nouns
Seasons: la primavera, el verano, el otoño, el invierno. In fixed time phrases the article often drops: en verano hace calor. Climate/environment nouns — learn each with its article, gender is not predictable: el clima (masculine despite -a), el medio ambiente, la naturaleza, el paisaje (masculine despite -e), la costa, la montaña, el campo, la contaminación. Full list in the note.
Drawn from real examiner reports.
tiempo = weather AND time — answering wrong
Tiempo is one word with two unrelated meanings, and Speaking candidates repeatedly pick the wrong one: ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy? = weather (answer hace sol, hace frío...), but No tengo tiempo = time. Hace buen/mal tiempo always means weather, never a duration. Only context tells them apart: hace + tiempo is always about weather.
Digest Paper 3 Speaking: "tiempo misread as time vs weather" (multiple sittings) — the single most cited lexical trap for this topic.
Preterite for background weather
Weather in a past narrative is usually a background state, so it takes the imperfect: Ayer hacía sol cuando salimos — the ongoing backdrop to salimos. Weaker answers write ayer hizo sol, which reads as one completed block and is less natural as scene-setting. The same holds for estaba nublado, había niebla, hacía frío.
Digest: preterite/imperfect confusion marked under Accuracy every sitting; weather flagged "consistently weak, especially in a past timeframe" (s22 RP5; w22 topic 5).
el clima/el paisaje mis-gendered by ending
Several nouns break the "-a feminine, -o masculine" rule, causing an adjective error: el clima (masculine despite -a) → el clima es seco, not seca; el paisaje (masculine despite -e) → precioso; la costa (feminine) → una costa rocosa. Check the adjective against the article, not the noun's final letter.
Digest "Gender & number agreement": adjective–noun agreement is a top Writing error every sitting; the el clima/el día/el mapa exception pattern recurs.
medio ambiente ≠ "doing sport outdoors"
El medio ambiente means the (natural) environment — pollution, recycling, conservation. Weaker candidates misread it as "doing sport outdoors" or "the middle/half", and answer off-topic. Keep the environment sense: proteger el medio ambiente, la contaminación, el reciclaje, los espacios verdes (green spaces).
Digest Area C: weaker candidates misread "medio ambiente" as "doing sport outdoors" (s23 P41 Q3b Task 2); "espacios verdes" specifics missed (s23 P41 Q3b Task 3).
está nublado stays masculine singular
In está nublado / está despejado, the adjective describes the implied el tiempo (the weather/sky), so it stays masculine singular regardless of who is speaking: Hoy está nublado, never está nublada. This is not a person-agreement — do not switch it to feminine or plural. It is fixed with estar + the weather adjective.
Weather does not use ser/estar like English
Because English says "it is sunny/cold", many assume Spanish weather uses ser or estar. But hace sol, hace frío, hace viento always use hacer — never es sol, está frío or tiene viento. Estar appears only with a sky adjective (está nublado) or continuous (está lloviendo) — never ser. Hace is invariable: never hacen nubes.
Digest: the ser/estar common-error entry recurs on the Writing list every sitting.
Pick the weather verb family first
Before writing a weather phrase, ask: is the word a noun (sol, frío, niebla, nubes) or an adjective (nublado, despejado)? Nouns take hace or hay; adjectives take está. Deciding first stops the common slip es sol / tiene niebla.
Choose the tense for the timeframe asked
For a general climate statement, use the present: el clima es seco, llueve en invierno. Narrating a past scene, use the imperfect for weather as backdrop (hacía sol, estaba nublado), and the preterite only for the single event (empezó a llover).
Agree adjectives with the noun's true gender
Agree every climate adjective with the noun's actual gender, not its ending — check the article. El clima seco (not seca), el paisaje precioso, una costa rocosa. The gender-exception nouns (el clima, el paisaje) are where the mark is lost.
¿Qué tiempo hace? — answer with weather
Whenever a question uses ¿Qué tiempo hace...?, answer with weather vocabulary (hace sol, hay niebla, está nublado), never an amount of time. The hacer in this fixed question always signals the weather sense of tiempo.
This topic covers weather expressions (hace/hay/está), the four seasons, and climate/natural-environment vocabulary.
Weather — three fixed verb families:
| Family | Examples | English |
|---|---|---|
| hace + noun | hace sol, hace calor, hace frío, hace viento, hace buen/mal tiempo | it's sunny/hot/cold/windy, the weather's good/bad |
| hay + noun | hay niebla, hay tormenta, hay nubes | it's foggy, there's a storm, it's cloudy |
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