Wind

Also called windy, breezy, wind icon, gale

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

Wind meaning

A wind icon on a forecast means wind is the expected story of that period. It is not a station-model barb, which reports a measured direction and speed.

At a glance

System: Forecast icon
Used for: An expected windy period
Not the same as: A wind barb or the wind-face character

A forecast icon for expected wind. Not a wind barb, and not the wind-face character.

The name. Windy is a WWIS label. A wind barb is a measured speed and direction. The two are not interchangeable.

Download drawing

Where it comes from

WWIS lists windy, and also squall, stormy, and gale, as separate labels. Apple lists windy and breezy. None of those rows is the barb used on a station plot or a surface map. The barb’s arithmetic, a pennant for 50 knots and a long barb for 10, is on the wind-barb page. The Unicode wind face is a character with a code point.

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 period is expected to be windy enough that the service gave it a wind icon, sometimes beside another sky icon and sometimes instead of one. The icon rarely encodes a compass point. If you need “from the southwest at 20 knots,” you are looking for a barb or a written wind, not this mark.

Variants

Breezy, gale, squall

Apple’s breezy is a softer product word. WWIS lists gale and squall as further labels. A squall line on a map is a boundary, and it has its own page. Do not read a forecast gust icon as that front.

Questions

What does a windy icon mean?

The forecast expects wind. WWIS lists windy apart from gale and squall. The icon is not a direction and not a speed.

Is a wind icon the same as a wind barb?

No. The barb is an observation or a map mark: direction from the shaft, speed from pennants and barbs. The forecast icon only says that wind matters in that period.

Often confusedWind barbThe barb points to where the wind comes from and counts knots. A forecast wind icon does not.

Often confusedWind faceWind face is U+1F32C. It is a character, often drawn with a face. It is not a measured wind.

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.