времена́ го́да (vri-mi-NA GO-da), “times of the year”: the seasons. In much of Russia winter lasts from November to March.
Russian vocabulary·пого́да · weather
Weather and seasons in Russian
In Russian, rain and snow go: идёт дождь, “rain is going”. Temperatures are plus or minus, and minus twenty is an ordinary winter morning. Here is everything you need to talk about the one topic every Russian has an opinion on.
To say “in” a season, Russian uses no preposition. The season word takes a special ending (it is the instrumental case, the “by means of” form, frozen into an adverb). Learn the four pairs together.
Snow from November to April in Moscow; much longer in Siberia.
Late and fast. Snow melts into mud: the season of сля́коть (SLYA-kat’, slush).
Short and often hot. White nights in St Petersburg in June.
Golden in September, grey by November. Pushkin’s favourite season.
The weather: nouns and descriptions
Describe the weather with a short word ending in -о, used without “it is”: Хо́лодно (it’s cold). The word is an adverb, so it never changes. Tap any item to hear it.
Things in the skynouns
What it’s likeadverbs: used alone, never change
Хо́лодно describes the weather; Мне хо́лодно (mnye KHO-lad-na; Мне = to me, хо́лодно = cold) means “I feel cold”. More in Impersonal sentences.
Rain “goes”: идёт дождь
Falling weather uses the verb идти́ (to go on foot). It agrees with the weather word, and in the past tense it changes for gender: дождь is masculine, so шёл; гроза́ is feminine, so шла.
Now
Yesterday
Tomorrow
Temperature: плюс пять, ми́нус два́дцать
Russia uses degrees Celsius. Russians say плюс or ми́нус before the number, and usually leave out гра́дусов (degrees). The word гра́дус changes with the number, like every noun after a number: оди́н гра́дус, два гра́дуса, пять гра́дусов.
Reading a forecast: прогно́з пого́ды
A typical TV or app forecast for Moscow, sentence by sentence.
Москва́ · за́втра−8° … −3°
A favourite Russian saying, quoted every bad-weather day: У приро́ды нет плохо́й пого́ды (u pri-RO-dy nyet pla-KHOY pa-GO-dy; У = at, приро́ды = nature, нет = there is no, плохо́й = bad, пого́ды = weather): nature has no bad weather.