What 🌥️ means
A grey day with the sun still peeking through: mostly cloudy.
The picture is a weather-forecast icon. Forecasters describe how much of the sky is covered, and this emoji sits near the cloudy end: lots of cloud, a little sun. Its two siblings show the same scene with less cloud. is the plain sun behind cloud, roughly half and half; is the sun behind a small cloud, mostly sunny. Then come for cloud with no sun at all and for sun with rain. So the sun-and-cloud family runs from bright to grey: , , 🌥️, .
Because it still shows sun, 🌥️ is not a rain emoji and not a storm warning. There are no raindrops in it; if someone means a wet day they reach for or instead. It also says nothing about temperature. A mostly cloudy day can be mild and pleasant or chilly and dull, and the emoji leaves that to the words around it.
What does it mean when someone sends 🌥️?
Usually just the weather: dull but dry, so plans can go ahead.
Most people send it literally. In reply to "what's it like out there?" it means grey skies, no rain yet, nothing dramatic. Under a photo it explains the flat light. In a plan for a picnic, a hike or a wedding it says the day will not be glorious, but it will not be a washout either, so bring a layer and go anyway.
The metaphor is the second life of every weather emoji. A cloudy sky stands for a low mood, and the glimpse of sun stands for hope that is still there. Somebody who texts "today was a 🌥️ kind of day" is telling you they felt flat but not hopeless. That reading only works when the words carry it; sent on its own, 🌥️ is weather, not feelings, and reading sadness into a friend's forecast is a quick way to confuse them.
Neutral and practical, like an icon on a weather app; equally at home in a family chat and a work message about an outdoor event.
It does not mean rain. If you want to warn people to bring an umbrella, send or instead.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsGrey and cloudy but not raining; a plain forecast.
Don't confuse it with
4
Combination ideas
4Worth knowing
- Like most of the detailed weather emoji, 🌥️ started life as a symbol in Microsoft's Webdings font and was taken into Unicode in 2014 so text using those fonts would survive on other systems.
- Weather forecasters divide the sky into eighths. "Mostly cloudy" means roughly six or seven eighths covered, which is about what the large cloud in 🌥️ is hiding.
Questions people ask
4Why does 🌥️ sometimes appear as a tiny black-and-white outline?
Because it is not a colour emoji by default. The hidden variation selector after it asks for emoji style; when an app drops that code or lacks the font, you get a plain text symbol instead.
Is 🌥️ the same as ?
No. They show the same scene, but has about half the sun visible and 🌥️ hides most of it. Choose for partly cloudy and 🌥️ for mostly cloudy.
Which emoji means overcast?
. Overcast means no sun at all, and 🌥️ still shows a sliver of it, so forecasters would call 🌥️ mostly cloudy rather than overcast.
Can 🌥️ mean I'm feeling down?
It can, if your words say so. The cloud reads as a low mood and the bit of sun as hope. On its own, though, it is read as a weather report.
More like this
11
Collections with 🌥️
7
How to type or find 🌥️
- Also called
- mostly cloudy · barely sunny · sun behind cloud
- Search it as
- mostly cloudy emoji · cloudy sun · large cloud · grey sky · overcast sun · partly sunny · cloud sun · weather emoji
- Type it as
- :barely_sunny:
- Around since
- 2014 · Emoji 0.7
- Shows up on
- Every phone · iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux
:barely_sunny:Common shortcode in Slack, GitHub, Discord, Mattermost and other chat apps; a few apps use a different name.🌥️Codes and encoding2 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.