What ⛇ means
It comes from Japan’s ARIB STD-B24 weather-symbol set.
ARIB STD-B24 is Japan’s standard for digital television broadcasts. A European Book of Hours, a type of prayer book, shows a snowman around 1380. That dates the figure, not this particular forecast sign.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ⛇ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ⛇
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 26C7, then Alt+X to get ⛇.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “black snowman”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 26c7, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⛇CSS
\26C7Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⛇
HTML hex
⛇
CSS content
content: "\26C7";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%9B%87
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.