Weather is a recent feature introduced to Pokemon GO in December of 2017. Not only does it look cool, it brings diversity and a lot more to the game. Let’s take a closer look at what this recent change involves and how it affected Pokemon moves.
- Pokemon of a weather’s corresponding types will appear more frequently
- Weather-influenced spawns have better IVs and can be caught at higher level
- Weather-influenced spawns will give you 25% more Stardust when caught during their accompanying weather effect
- Pokemon move types will deal approximately 20% more damage while being influenced by their corresponding weather
Pokemon GO Weather Chart
Weather | Boosted types |
Sunny | Grass Ground Fire |
Rainy | Water Electric Bug |
Windy | Dragon Psychic |
Snow | Ice Steel |
Fog | Dark Ghost |
Cloudy | Fairy Fighting Poison |
Partly Cloudy | Normal Rock |
Extreme | No Pokemon likes this weather. |
How is weather determined?
Weather in Pokemon GO is updated every hour, on the full hour. Niantic appears to be using forecast by AccuWeather. Keep in mind, weather is assigned to certain areas (level 10 or 11 s2 cells) based on the hourly weather forecast and not based on current weather.
Be sure to look out the window before going out. It might be raining outside even though it’s only cloudy in-game.
Weather encounter effects
You can identify a weather specific spawn by a special “swirly effect” enclosing the Pokemon.
E.g. Crobat (Flying/Poison) and Jigglypuff (Normal/Fairy) have “swirly effect” around them because Cloudy weather boosts Poison, Fairy and Fighting.
Those weather-influenced spawns will:
- give you 25% more Stardust upon capture;
- have IV values in range from 4-15, rather than the usual 0-15;
- be 5 level higher than usual, that means in the 6-35 level range.
Please keep in mind that when active weather changes all the Pokemon that were affected before revert their IVs and level to the range for normal spawns.
Raid bosses that are influenced with weather don’t get any additional boost to their IVs but they are encountered at 5 levels higher, i.e. level 25.
Pokemon moves in corresponding weather
As mentioned before, when a Pokemon move is being influenced by its corresponding weather, it will deal approximately 20% more damage.
When calculating move damage, Pokemon type has nothing to do with bonuses. E.g. Arcanine Fire can get a bonus 20% on it’s charge move Wild Charge Electric during Rainy weather.
In some cases, a fast move’s bonus might not displayed accurately because its power damage, when divided by 5 (20%), is not a round number. In theses cases (as per the example below), the bonus showed in-game will display a number rounded to the nearest integer. However, do not worry, the number used in the damage calculations is not rounded and therefore will reflect the actual damage input.