Umbrella With Rain Drops

It means rain: it's raining now or about to, so take an umbrella. The picture is an open umbrella with drops falling on it, and that is the whole message. People send it with "take an umbrella", alongside a morning greeting, when plans might get rained out, or simply as a one-character weather report from wherever they are.

It also carries the rainy-day feeling: grey skies, staying in, tea and a blanket, a long wet season. In places with a monsoon or rainy season it marks that time of year. It is a weather emoji first and a mood second, and it is neutral: nobody takes offence at a rain forecast.

Why does an umbrella mean rain?

Because weather forecasts in Japan have drawn rain as an umbrella for decades. Japanese forecasts use a sun for clear skies, a cloud for overcast, a snowman for snow and an open umbrella for rain, so the "umbrella mark" simply reads as "rain" there. When Japan's first mobile phone emoji appeared in 1999, the weather set copied that convention, and the umbrella with rain drops became the rain emoji that later went worldwide.

The character itself has an older computer life. North Korea's KPS 9566 text standard listed it among weather signs in 1997, and Unicode took it in from there, with a draft name of SHOWER WEATHER that became UMBRELLA WITH RAIN DROPS before publication. So the same picture was already a forecast symbol in two unrelated systems before phones gave it colour.

What does it mean when someone sends ☔?

They are telling you about rain, almost never anything hidden. Alone, it means it is raining where they are or the forecast says rain. Next to plans it means the weather may interfere. Repeated, it means a lot of rain. With a cup or a blanket it is a cosy rainy day rather than a warning. Treat anything beyond weather as a joke you need the surrounding words to get.