Cloud With Snow Emoji
U+1F328:cloud_with_snow:About Cloud With Snow π¨οΈ
Cloud With Snow () is part of the Travel & Places group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E0.7. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. On Discord it's . Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode.
Often associated with cloud, cold, snow, and 1 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
A cloud dropping snowflakes. That's it. No hidden slang, no generational warfare, no political subtext. π¨οΈ is one of the few emojis that means exactly what it looks like: it's snowing.
Approved in Unicode 7.0 (2014) as Cloud with Snow and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015, this emoji arrived as part of a batch of weather symbols designed to give your phone the full forecast toolkit. But here's the thing: almost nobody uses it. In Emojipedia's analysis of 859 million tweets, π¨οΈ didn't crack the top 15 weather emojis. People who want to say "snow" reach for βοΈ instead, because a single crystalline snowflake is more iconic than a cloud doing its job.
π¨οΈ lives in the shadow of its flashier sibling. βοΈ gets the Christmas captions, the Frozen references, the political insult baggage. π¨οΈ gets... weather reports. It's the workhorse emoji that describes the actual event (snow falling from clouds) while βοΈ gets credit for the aesthetic (winter, cold, uniqueness). Think of π¨οΈ as the meteorologist and βοΈ as the Instagram influencer.
π¨οΈ shows up almost exclusively in literal weather commentary. You'll see it in tweets and stories when actual snow is falling, in weather app screenshots people share, and in ski resort condition updates. Some ski resorts even experimented with all-emoji snow reports on Twitter during the 2018-2019 season, using π¨οΈ alongside temperature and wind emojis to give a visual conditions snapshot.
On Instagram and TikTok, π¨οΈ appears in winter aesthetic combos like π¨οΈππ―οΈ (cozy winter night) and π¨οΈβΈοΈβοΈπ€ (winter love). Videos with snow-related emojis in captions saw a 46% increase in reach during winter 2024 on TikTok. But π¨οΈ usually plays a supporting role in these combos rather than starring alone.
In workplace messaging on Slack and Teams, π¨οΈ has a niche use: the "working from home because of weather" status signal. It's become shorthand for "don't expect me in the office today" without needing to type out the explanation.
It means it's snowing, or you're talking about snow/winter weather. Unlike many emojis, π¨οΈ has no hidden slang, no figurative meanings, and no generational double meanings. It's purely literal: a cloud dropping snowflakes.
Top 15 weather emojis on Twitter (2021-2023)
Weather From Clear to Storm
The Weather Conditions Family
Emoji combos
The Death of the Snow Day
Then COVID happened. Schools discovered they could pivot to remote learning. And suddenly, snow days started disappearing. An EdWeek survey found that roughly 70% of principals had converted or were considering converting snow days to virtual learning days. New York City officially replaced snow days with remote learning. In January 2026, when a nor'easter hit the Northeast, many districts told students to log on from home instead of giving them the day off.
The backlash has been real. Only about 70% of students actually show up for remote snow day instruction, and rural students without reliable internet get left behind entirely. Many districts now compromise: they'll allow a few traditional snow days before switching to virtual, or decide case-by-case.
For adults working remotely, the snow day already died years ago. When your commute is a hallway, there's no weather excuse. π¨οΈ in a Slack status used to mean "I can't make it in." Now it just means "my view today is nice."
Should schools keep traditional snow days?
Origin story
π¨οΈ was part of a Unicode 7.0 weather expansion in June 2014. Before this update, the emoji weather vocabulary was limited: you had βοΈ (sun), βοΈ (cloud), and β (rain). Unicode 7.0 added a whole meteorology department worth of emojis, including π€οΈ (sun behind small cloud), π₯οΈ (sun behind large cloud), π¦οΈ (sun behind rain cloud), π§οΈ (cloud with rain), π¨οΈ (cloud with snow), π©οΈ (cloud with lightning), and πͺοΈ (tornado).
The emoji became available on phones with Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Apple's version shows a white-grey cloud with three blue snowflakes falling from it. Google and Samsung have similar designs, though the exact shade of blue and number of snowflakes varies. It's one of the more consistent emojis across platforms, probably because there aren't many ways to interpret "cloud dropping snow."
The character sits at in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block. Like other weather emojis from this era, it requires a variation selector () to render as a colorful emoji rather than a plain text symbol.
Design history
Around the world
In Japan, snow carries deep literary and cultural weight. Yasunari Kawabata's novel Snow Country (ιͺε½, Yukiguni, 1935-1947) is one of the most celebrated works of Japanese literature and helped earn Kawabata the Nobel Prize in 1968. The opening line, "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country," is one of the most famous sentences in Japanese fiction. For Japanese users, snow emojis can carry a romantic, melancholic weight that doesn't translate to Western audiences.
In regions of Japan known as yukiguni (snow country), communities have developed entire cultural traditions around heavy snowfall, including folk dances like Hachinohe Enburi that pray for harvest survival through brutal winters. Snow there isn't whimsical. It's survival.
In the US and UK, π¨οΈ is more playful. It's the "school might be cancelled" emoji, the Instagram ski trip caption, the excuse to work from home. The emotional register is completely different depending on whether your relationship with snow is recreational or existential.
Fewer and fewer. Since COVID, about 70% of US school principals have considered replacing traditional snow days with remote learning days. New York City officially made the switch. The emoji that once meant "school's cancelled!" increasingly means "log on from home." Remote workers lost snow days even earlier, since you can't claim a weather delay when your commute is your hallway.
Where people use π¨οΈ
Weather emoji sentiment scores
The winter emoji pecking order
Often confused with
βοΈ is a single snowflake crystal (the symbol, the aesthetic, the insult). π¨οΈ is a cloud with snow falling (the weather event). Most people default to βοΈ for anything snow-related, leaving π¨οΈ for literal weather reporting.
βοΈ is a single snowflake crystal (the symbol, the aesthetic, the insult). π¨οΈ is a cloud with snow falling (the weather event). Most people default to βοΈ for anything snow-related, leaving π¨οΈ for literal weather reporting.
π₯Ά is a freezing face (the physical feeling of cold). π¨οΈ is the weather causing that feeling. π₯Ά is "I'm frozen," π¨οΈ is "it's snowing outside."
π₯Ά is a freezing face (the physical feeling of cold). π¨οΈ is the weather causing that feeling. π₯Ά is "I'm frozen," π¨οΈ is "it's snowing outside."
βοΈ is cloud with lightning and rain (thunderstorm). π¨οΈ is cloud with snow. Both are weather events, but one is dramatic and the other is quiet.
βοΈ is cloud with lightning and rain (thunderstorm). π¨οΈ is cloud with snow. Both are weather events, but one is dramatic and the other is quiet.
π¨οΈ shows the weather event (snow falling from a cloud). βοΈ shows the object (a single snowflake crystal). In practice, βοΈ is 10-20x more popular because it works as both a literal and symbolic emoji. π¨οΈ is stuck being the weather reporter while βοΈ gets all the Christmas captions and Frozen references.
No. π¨οΈ is Cloud with Snow (a weather scene showing snowfall). βοΈ is Snowflake (a single ice crystal). They represent different things, even though both relate to snow. At small text sizes they can be hard to tell apart, so double-check which one you're sending.
Do's and don'ts
- βDon't use it when you mean βοΈ (snowflake as symbol/aesthetic)
- βDon't spam it in summer unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere
- βDon't assume it carries any slang or hidden meaning, it doesn't
Because βοΈ exists. When people want to convey "snow" or "winter" in a message, the snowflake emoji is more iconic, more versatile, and more recognizable. π¨οΈ is limited to literal weather reporting, while βοΈ works for aesthetics, symbolism, insults, and decoration. Emojipedia's analysis of 859 million tweets found that π¨οΈ didn't even make the top 15 weather emojis.
Absolutely. It's one of the safest emojis for workplace use since it has no slang meanings. On Slack and Teams, people use it in status messages to signal weather-related schedule changes. It's professional, unambiguous, and universally understood.
For a blizzard specifically, try combining π¨οΈ with wind (π¨) and cold (π₯Ά): π¨οΈπ¨π₯Ά. There's no dedicated blizzard emoji. You could also use π¨οΈπ€π§ for dramatic effect. For a simple "it's snowing" message, either π¨οΈ or βοΈ works.
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Type it as text
The Weather Emoji Hierarchy
| Emoji | Role | Search volume | Vibe | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| βοΈ Snowflake | The star | High | Aesthetic, symbolic, political | |
| π₯Ά Cold Face | The reaction | High | Physical sensation, humor | |
| β Snowman | The mascot | Medium | Playful, childlike, holiday | |
| βοΈ Snowman w/ snow | The classic | Low | Traditional, Christmas-card | |
| π¨οΈ Cloud w/ Snow | The reporter | Very low | Literal, functional, weather | |
| π§ Ice | The accessory | Low | Cold drinks, slang ("icy") |
Fun facts
- β’π¨οΈ didn't make Emojipedia's top 15 most-used weather emojis, based on analysis of 859 million tweets. Even π (closed umbrella) beat it.
- β’The Emoji Sentiment Ranking at JoΕΎef Stefan Institute doesn't even include π¨οΈ in its dataset of 751 most frequent emojis. It simply isn't used enough to measure.
- β’Japan's "snow country" (yukiguni) regions receive some of the heaviest snowfall on Earth. Kawabata Yasunari's novel Snow Country set in these regions helped earn him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- β’About 70% of US school principals have converted or considered converting traditional snow days to remote learning days since COVID.
Common misinterpretations
- β’Unlike βοΈ, π¨οΈ has zero slang meanings. Nobody uses it to call someone a "snowflake" or to mean emotionally cold. If someone sends you π¨οΈ, they're talking about actual weather, not your personality.
- β’Some people confuse π¨οΈ with π§οΈ (cloud with rain) at small sizes. Double-check if the droplets are snowflakes or raindrops before replying with ski plans.
In pop culture
- β’Disney's Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019) dominated snow-related emoji culture, but the franchise mostly boosted βοΈ and β rather than π¨οΈ. Disney even made a Frozen as Told by Emoji short film using emoji characters to retell the story.
- β’The 2024-2025 North American winter brought multiple bomb cyclones, including a November storm that knocked out power to 900,000+ people and a late-December blizzard affecting 200 million Americans. These events generated massive spikes in snow emoji usage across social media.
- β’The "snow day is dead" discourse went mainstream in January 2026 when multiple school districts replaced snow days with remote learning during a nor'easter, sparking heated debate about whether kids deserve unscheduled days off.
Trivia
For developers
- β’π¨οΈ is a two-character sequence: (CLOUD WITH SNOW) + (variation selector-16). Without the variation selector, some platforms render it as a text glyph instead of a colorful emoji.
- β’The base character was added in Unicode 7.0 (2014). Use in JavaScript to construct it programmatically.
- β’Discord shortcode: . Slack shortcode: . GitHub doesn't have a native shortcode for this one.
The character was approved in Unicode 7.0 in June 2014 and became available on phones through Emoji 1.0 in 2015. It was part of a weather emoji expansion that also added π§οΈ, π©οΈ, πͺοΈ, and several cloud-and-sun combinations.
Across all major platforms (Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft), π¨οΈ shows a grey or white cloud with blue snowflakes falling from it. The number and style of snowflakes vary slightly, but it's one of the most consistent emojis across platforms. You won't run into miscommunication issues with this one.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
What does π¨οΈ mean to you?
Select all that apply
- Cloud with Snow Emoji (emojipedia.org)
- 15 Most-Used Weather Emoji (Fox Weather / Emojipedia) (foxweather.com)
- Emoji Sentiment Ranking v1.0 (kt.ijs.si)
- Emoji Snow Report Tweets (SlopeFillers) (slopefillers.com)
- How Remote Learning Has Changed the Traditional Snow Day (EdWeek) (edweek.org)
- Should Schools Replace Snow Days? (Chalkbeat) (chalkbeat.org)
- Snow Country (Wikipedia) (wikipedia.org)
- Yukiguni Winter Culture (yukigunijapan.com)
- 2024-25 North American Winter (Wikipedia) (wikipedia.org)
- Google Trends: Winter Emoji Comparison (trends.google.com)
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