Weather Symbols Guide

Weather symbols in Unicode span from classical astronomical characters dating back to medieval manuscripts to modern emoji added in recent Unicode versions. They appear in weather applications, travel interfaces, dashboards, and anywhere environmental conditions need to be communicated concisely.

Classical Weather Symbols

The oldest weather-related Unicode characters come from the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600–U+26FF), which encodes symbols with long typographic histories:

The sun character (☀ U+2600) traces its origins to alchemical and astrological manuscripts where it represented the Sun as a celestial body. The umbrella character (☂ U+2602) was encoded from Japanese teletext systems where it served as a rain indicator in weather forecasts.

Emoji Weather Symbols (BMP and Beyond)

Unicode 6.0 and later versions added a rich set of weather emoji that provide more specific and visually expressive representations:

Moon Phases

Unicode encodes the complete set of lunar phase symbols, useful for astronomy apps, tide calculators, and calendar applications:

The classical moon symbols ☽ (U+263D FIRST QUARTER MOON) and ☾ (U+263E LAST QUARTER MOON) predate the emoji set and appear in astrological and astronomical typography.

Wind Symbols and the Beaufort Scale

Several Unicode characters relate to wind and air movement:

• 💨 U+1F4A8 DASHING AWAY — commonly used for wind or speed
• 🌬 U+1F32C WIND FACE — directional wind
• 🍃 U+1F343 LEAF FLUTTERING IN WIND — light breeze

The Beaufort scale (0–12) describing wind force has no dedicated Unicode symbols. Weather applications typically combine text labels with directional arrows (→ ↗ ↑ ↖ ← ↙ ↓ ↘, U+2192 through U+2199) for wind direction, supplemented by speed values in km/h or knots.

WMO and SYNOP Notation

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) uses SYNOP code — a numerical system for encoding surface weather observations. While SYNOP itself predates Unicode and uses numeric codes rather than graphical symbols, modern weather data platforms render SYNOP observations using Unicode characters as display representations.

WMO Publication No. 8 (the CIMO Guide) defines the international meteorological symbol set for synoptic charts. These specialized symbols — representing weather station models, fronts, and isobar annotations on printed weather maps — are largely outside Unicode, using specialized fonts in meteorological software.

Practical Implementation for Weather UIs

When building a weather dashboard or widget, a practical approach to symbol selection:

For current conditions, use the emoji variants (U+1F300 range) rather than the classic Miscellaneous Symbols — they have more consistent rendering across platforms and include more granular distinctions (sun behind small cloud vs. large cloud).

For historical or technical contexts (like synoptic charts or climate data), the classic symbols ☀ ☁ ☂ are more appropriate and render predictably in monospace/terminal contexts.

Variation selectors: The classic weather symbols (U+2600–U+26FF) sometimes display as emoji by default on mobile platforms. To force text rendering, append U+FE0E (VARIATION SELECTOR-15). To force emoji rendering, append U+FE0F (VARIATION SELECTOR-16):

# ☀ (default, platform-dependent)
# ☀︎ (U+2600 + U+FE0E, text presentation)
# ☀️ (U+2600 + U+FE0F, emoji presentation)

This is particularly relevant when using weather symbols in terminal output or monospaced code contexts, where emoji rendering can disrupt alignment.

Snowflake Variations

The snowflake character ❄ (U+2744 SNOWFLAKE) is the most commonly used, but Unicode includes an extensive set of snowflake variants in the Dingbats block:

These variants appear in decorative typography, seasonal UI themes, and loading indicators where a rotating snowflake provides visual feedback.