Rain

Also called rain icon, rainfall, steady rain

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

Rain meaning

Rain, as a forecast icon, means liquid rain is the weather expected in that period. A shower, drizzle, freezing rain, and a station-plot mark are different signs.

At a glance

System: Forecast icon, with a station-plot note
Used for: Expected rain, not a probability
Not the same as: Showers, drizzle, freezing rain, or a plot glyph

A forecast icon for rain expected in a period. Not a shower, not drizzle, and not the station-model sign.

The name. Rain, showers, drizzle, and freezing rain are different rows. A chance of rain is not a row at all.

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Where it comes from

WWIS lists rain apart from showers, rainshower, drizzle, light rain, and freezing rain. The Met Office guide separates light rain, heavy rain, drizzle, and rain showers by day and by night. MetService, writing about its own icons, calls rain steadier than showers and normally paired with cloudy or overcast skies, and it describes raindrops as larger than 0.5 millimetres. That size is MetService’s, not a world rule. On a station plot, present weather is a different sign, drawn only when precipitation or a visibility restriction is occurring.

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 names the kind of weather. It does not say how likely the rain is. The Met Office states a percentage as the chance that at least 0.1 millimetres falls in an hour, or 0.3 millimetres in a three-hour forecast. Precipitation, in that guide, includes rain, sleet, snow, hail, and drizzle. A high percentage can sit beside a shower icon. A rain icon can sit beside a lower one. Read the pair.

Weather

On a station plot

The Weather Prediction Center plots a present-weather sign only when something is falling or the air is thick enough to cut the view. That sign belongs to the observing codes. This cabinet does not redraw every code in WMO table 4677, and it does not pretend the forecast drop is that code’s glyph.

Variants

Light and heavy

The Met Office prints light rain and heavy rain as separate icons, and says the symbol can help show that difference. WWIS also lists light rain apart from rain. Intensity is a label, not a universal fill-level of one drop.

Showers

Showers begin and end. They are the rain-shower page. Steady rain stays with the cloud deck.

In popular use

product · iOS

Apple Weather

Apple lists Rain and Heavy rain as their own icons, separate from Drizzle and from Freezing rain.

Apple’s grouping is a product choice. It is not the WWIS table.

Source

Worth knowing

On the Met Office guide, 70 percent means a 7 in 10 chance that precipitation falls in the period, not a rain icon that is 70 percent full. Source

Questions

What does a rain cloud icon mean?

It means the forecast expects rain in that period. It is not a chance of rain. The Met Office prints the chance as a separate percentage.

Is rain the same symbol on a weather map station?

No. A station model uses a present-weather sign beside the sky-cover circle, and only when precipitation or reduced visibility is occurring. The phone icon is a summary of what is expected.

Are light rain and drizzle the same icon?

No. WWIS lists drizzle and light rain apart. The Met Office lists drizzle, light rain, and heavy rain as different icons.

Often confusedRain showerMetService describes showers as starting and ending suddenly, often with blue sky between. Rain is the steadier fall.

Often confusedDrizzleDrizzle is a WWIS row of its own. MetService limits the word to droplets under half a millimetre. That limit is theirs.

Often confusedWaterThe water triangle is an alchemical element. It is not a rain forecast and not a present-weather code.

Near this

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.