El clima y las estaciones
Weather is where Spanish quietly drops the subject. Nobody is cold — it simply hace frío, with hacer locked into the third person singular and nothing standing in front of it. Next to that sit two verbs that are a whole sentence on their own, llueve and nieva, and a set of states built on estar: está nublado, está despejado. None of that is hard. What takes real attention is the calendar, because this course covers a region that crosses the equator: enero is the hottest month of the year in Buenos Aires and one of the coldest in Monterrey, and along the equator the four seasons give way to la temporada de lluvias and la temporada seca, where invierno can mean rain falling at thirty degrees. One vocabulary habit to pick up straight away: the word people here reach for is el clima.
hacer — the weather nobody is doing
Weather in Spanish has no subject. The verb is hacer, frozen in the third person singular — hace, and nothing else, ever — and behind it comes a noun: hace frío, hace calor, hace sol, hace viento, hace fresco, hace buen tiempo, hace mal tiempo. Because those are nouns and not adjectives, the word that stretches them is mucho and not muy: hace mucho frío, hace mucho calor. Hace muy frío is the most common mistake in this lesson and it announces itself instantly. Everything else the verb does, it does normally. Yesterday: Ayer hizo un calor tremendo. Watch that tense — a finished stretch of weather takes the preterite here, so hizo and not ha hecho, even when it was this same morning: Hoy hizo mucho frío en la mañana. Tomorrow: Mañana va a hacer frío or Mañana hará frío, both perfectly ordinary. And when you want to complain properly the region hands you two moves — the exclamation left hanging, ¡Hace un frío!, with nothing after it, and the diminutive that turns the same weather into something pleasant: hace fresquito, hace calorcito, salió un solecito.
llover, nevar, and the verbs with only one form
Some weather is a verb all by itself. llover is to rain and nevar is to snow, and neither needs anything in front of it: Llueve. Nieva. Both are stem-changers, which is why the infinitive looks nothing like the form you actually use — llover has o→ue and gives llueve, nevar has e→ie and gives nieva — and both are stuck in the third person singular for life, because there is nobody available to be the subject. The family is bigger than those two: lloviznar → llovizna for drizzle, granizar → graniza for hail, tronar → truena for thunder, and amanecer for how the day broke — Amaneció nublado. Now put them through the tenses you already own. This minute, with the gerundio from lesson 33: Está lloviendo. Está nevando. Finished: Llovió toda la noche. Anoche granizó. Notice once more that today's rain is Hoy llovió mucho, in the preterite, and not ha llovido; that reflex belongs to Spain and sounds foreign from Tijuana to Ushuaia. Coming up: Va a llover. Mañana lloverá. And after a trigger from lesson 29 the form flips like any other, still in that one lonely row: Ojalá no llueva. Espero que no nieve.
estar + adjective, and the word people actually use
The other half of the system describes a state, and states take estar. Está nublado. Está despejado. Está soleado. Está húmedo. Está fresco. El cielo está gris. These do not replace the hacer expressions so much as overlap with them — hace sol and está soleado describe the same afternoon — but estar is what you reach for when you are reporting what you can see out the window right now. Which brings up the noun. A course written in Spain will tell you that weather is el tiempo, and it is: ¿Qué tiempo hace? is correct and understood in every country. But listen to what people around you ask, and it is el clima. ¿Cómo está el clima? ¿Cómo va a estar el clima el fin de semana? Está feo el clima. In Spain that sounds like a question about the region's climate; from Monterrey to Santiago it is simply how you find out whether you need a jacket. Understand both, use el clima, and remember that in spite of the -a it is masculine — el clima, este clima — like el problema and el día.
Rain has more words here than snow does
The vocabulary is lopsided, and for a good reason: most of Latin America is warm and wet, so rain is what gets the fine distinctions. la lluvia is rain in general. la llovizna is the thin, patient drizzle that soaks you anyway — el chipichipi in central Mexico, la garúa on the coast of Peru and Chile, where Lima spends entire winters under a grey ceiling without a single proper storm. el aguacero is the pan-regional downpour, and the verb that goes with it is caer: Cayó un aguacero tremendo. el chubasco and el chaparrón are the shorter, sharper version. Around them: la tormenta for a storm, el trueno for thunder, el relámpago or el rayo for lightning, el granizo for hail, la neblina for mist and la niebla for thick fog. Then the equipment, because you will need it: el paraguas, el impermeable, and for a jacket la chamarra in Mexico or la chaqueta almost everywhere else. Snow gets one noun and one verb, and outside the Andes and Patagonia most people go a lifetime without seeing any.
Four seasons — and which half of the map you are on
la primavera, el verano, el otoño, el invierno. They take en, with or without an article: en primavera, en el verano. The grammar is easy; the calendar is not. This region straddles the equator, so the seasons do not fall in the same months across it, and getting that wrong will make you misread half of what you hear. North of the line — Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia, Venezuela — the months line up with the ones you already expect: julio is summer, enero is winter. South of it — Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, most of Bolivia and southern Peru — everything flips. En Buenos Aires enero es pleno verano. Christmas dinner is an asado at thirty-five degrees, the long school holiday runs from December to February, and las vacaciones de invierno are two weeks in July. When a Chilean says the school year starts in March, that is the beginning of it and not the middle. The mental shortcut: below the equator, add six months to your instinct.
Where the year has two seasons instead of four
Closer to the equator the four seasons stop describing anything at all, because the temperature barely moves from January to December. What changes is the rain, so the year splits in two: la temporada de lluvias — also la época de lluvias — and la temporada seca. In Mexico City the rains run from May to October and arrive most afternoons around four, punctually enough to plan your day around. And here is the piece that catches every learner: in Central America, coastal Colombia and Ecuador those two halves are named el invierno and el verano. Not by temperature — by water. A Costa Rican who tells you in August Estamos en invierno means that it is raining, and it is thirty degrees while he says it. Altitude does the work that latitude does elsewhere. Bogotá sits at 2,600 metres and stays near fourteen degrees every day of the year, Medellín is la ciudad de la eterna primavera, and Quito and La Paz are cold in the shade and hot in the sun within the same hour. People in Bogotá say their city has cuatro estaciones en un día, and they are not exaggerating.
Degrees, forecasts, and how to ask
Temperature is Celsius everywhere in the region, and there are two ways to say it. With hacer: Hace treinta grados. With estar and a: Estamos a treinta grados — literally 'we are at thirty', and the more common of the two in conversation. You ask it as ¿A cuántos grados estamos? or ¿Qué temperatura hace? Below zero it is tres grados bajo cero, or just menos tres read off a screen. For what is coming, the forecast is el pronóstico del clima or el pronóstico del tiempo, and you report it with tools you already have: Va a llover. Mañana va a hacer calor. Dicen que lloverá toda la semana. Reported speech is how most weather talk actually travels — Dijeron que iba a llover — and the subjunctive turns up the moment you have a stake in the outcome: Ojalá no llueva. Espero que haga buen clima el sábado. Si llueve, no vamos a la playa. Two phrases worth taking whole: ¿Cómo está el clima allá? for asking about somewhere else, and Está haciendo un calor…, trailing off, for when the number does not do it justice.
