Map precipitation

Also called precipitation area, rain area, shaded precipitation

Weather-map symbol. A chart convention, not a forecast icon.

Map precipitation meaning

Map precipitation is an area or a word for where rain or snow is falling or expected. It is not the rain icon on a phone and not a front.

At a glance

System: Synoptic chart convention
Used for: An area of precipitation
Not the same as: A rain icon, a front, or a rain emoji

Rain or snow painted on a map as an area or a word. Not a rain icon, and not a front.

The name. Many public maps use a wash or a word. NESDIS’s sample uses words such as rain and snow. There is no single glyph.

Download drawing

Where it comes from

NESDIS’s guide to reading a weather map shows precipitation with words such as rain and snow on the sample, not with one universal glyph. Other publishers fill a region with a color or a hatch. Color is a legend’s job. This drawing is a hatched region so the page can show “an area” without inventing a drop that would be confused with the forecast icon. The legend of the map you are holding outranks the hatch.

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

Somewhere inside the region, the map claims precipitation of the kind it names. It does not say every town is wet at every minute. A forecast rain icon is a summary for a point and a period. Present weather is a station’s report. The shaded county is a third picture. Fronts may bound the region and are still boundaries, not the rain itself.

Variants

Words and washes

“Rain/snow” as type, a green fill, a hatch, a radar overlay. They need a legend. None of them is the WWIS rain row, and none of them is U+1F327.

Questions

How do weather maps show rain?

Often with a word, such as the rain and snow labels on the NESDIS sample map, or with a shaded area explained in a legend. There is no single precipitation glyph that all of those maps share.

Is the green blob a standard symbol?

Only inside the legend of that product. Another map may use hatch, type, or a different color. The meaning is the legend, not the pigment.

Often confusedRainThe rain icon summarizes a point forecast. A map area covers a region and often uses a word or a wash.

Often confusedCold frontThe front is the boundary. Precipitation may trail it. The triangle line is not the wet area.

Near this

Sources

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

Your margin

Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.

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