Clear sky

Also called sunny, clear day, fair sky, forecast icon

Forecast icon on a weather app or a public forecast table.

Clear sky meaning

Clear sky, as a forecast icon, means a service expects little or no cloud in that period. It is not a station plot, and it is not the sun character.

At a glance

System: Forecast icon
Used for: An expected open sky in a period
Not the same as: The alchemical sun, or a clear night

A forecast icon for an expected open sky. Not the alchemical sun, and not a clear night.

The name. Clear, sunny, fair, and fine are separate labels in the WWIS icon table. They are not one word.

Download drawing

Where it comes from

The World Weather Information Service publishes a public icon table for city forecasts. Clear, sunny, fair, and fine are different rows in that table, beside partly cloudy, cloudy, and overcast. The Met Office uses “sunny day” for its own daytime clear icon, and a separate clear-night icon. Where a service prints a night drawing, including WWIS for several skies, that picture replaces the day picture when the local time is night.

The line drawing is original to this cabinet. It is not an agency logo, a vendor icon, or the emoji for the same idea.

Weather

What it means

The icon is a summary of an expected sky, for an hour or a named part of the day. It does not measure the sky at a station, and it does not promise a temperature. A percentage beside it, when a service prints one, is a chance of precipitation. The Met Office reads 70 percent as a 7 in 10 chance that at least a small amount falls in the period. The icon can still be a clear or sunny mark if the expected kind of weather is dry.

Variants

Clear, sunny, fair, fine

WWIS lists those four as their own labels. A cabinet that drew four pages would pretend the words were four sciences. They are four wordings for a bright sky. Read the label on the forecast you have.

Day and night

The night picture is the clear-night page. Apple’s guide also splits clear and mostly clear from their night versions. Mostly clear is a product’s softening of clear, not a WWIS row under that name.

In popular use

product · iOS

Apple Weather

Apple’s iPhone guide lists Clear and Mostly clear, with night versions, among its weather icons.

A product list. The pictures are Apple’s, and they are not the WWIS table.

Source

Worth knowing

WWIS lists clear, sunny, fair, and fine as separate icon labels, not as one clear-sky row. Source

Questions

What does a clear sky weather icon mean?

It means the forecast expects little or no cloud in that period. Agencies and apps do not share one drawing. WWIS even splits clear, sunny, fair, and fine into separate labels.

Is a clear icon the same as a zero chance of rain?

No. The Met Office treats the icon as the kind of weather and the percentage as the chance that precipitation falls in the period. Read both when both are printed.

Why does the icon change at night?

Several services, including the World Weather Information Service, switch to a night drawing when the local time is night. That drawing is the clear-night page.

Often confusedSunThe sun in this cabinet is the astronomical and alchemical disk with a point. A clear-sky forecast is a weather summary, usually drawn with rays.

Often confusedClear nightClear night is the same idea after dark, and the picture changes. Do not read a crescent as a sunny day.

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Sources

Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.

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symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 18 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.