LocalizedWeather

Localized Weather

Weather stops being a switch and starts being a place.

Rain, snow, hail and thunderstorms happen independently across the world — you can stand in sunshine and watch a storm roll in over the hills.

What it does

Vanilla Minecraft has one weather state for the entire world. Localized Weather replaces it with a grid of 256×256 block zones, each rolling its own weather on its own schedule — then blends the seams so you never see a hard edge.

The result is weather with geography. Storms have a place they are, a direction they came from, and a direction they are going.

Features

| | Feature | What you actually see |
| :-: | ——- | ——————— |
| 🗺️ | Localized zones | Every 256×256 block zone runs its own weather independently |
| ⛈️ | Moving thunderstorm cells | Single-cell storms drift along the wind, grow, and dissipate on their own life span |
| 🌧️ | Rain wall & rain bands | A leaning curtain of rain hangs under each storm core, with trailing bands arcing behind it — and it stays drawn when the storm is far away |
| 🌾 | Biome-aware rules | Biomes without precipitation stay dry, cold biomes turn rain into snow, and each zone is decided from a 5×5 surface sample so one desert patch doesn’t dry out a whole zone |
| 🧊 | Hailstorms | Occasional icy squalls with custom falling hail particles |
| 🌬️ | Wind-driven fronts | A global wind direction slowly rotates; weather propagates from upwind neighbours |
| 🎚️ | Seamless transitions | Rain, fog and sky colour blend bilinearly across zone boundaries over 20 seconds |
| ☁️ | Storm clouds | Blocky, Minecraft-style cloud layers over stormy zones, visible from far off |
| 🌑 | Directional darkening | Sky, fog and clouds darken toward the approaching storm, not uniformly |
| 🔊 | Directional thunder | Thunder plays from the bearing of the storm, with proximity-based volume |
| 🧩 | Renderer-friendly | Drives Minecraft’s own cloud renderer instead of replacing it, so mods like VulkanMod still work |

How it works

Weather happens automatically. There is nothing to configure and no commands to learn.

| Phase | Duration | Notes |
| —– | ——– | —– |
| Clear skies | 10 min – 2.5 h | Then a chance of weather rolls |
| Rain / hail / storm | 10 – 20 min | Before the zone clears again |
| Zone transitions | 20 s | Blended across the boundary, never a hard cut |
| Wind shift | every 2.5 – 10 min | Slowly rotates; fronts follow it |

A zone that turns thundery spawns a storm cell — a travelling core 70–130 blocks across that lives for 4–10 minutes, moves at roughly 3–6 blocks per second, and carries its rain wall and rain bands with it. When the core passes over you, the rain arrives with the wall and leaves once it has gone by.

Storms further away than the fog horizon are not culled. Their geometry is projected onto the horizon at unchanged apparent size, so a thunderstorm several zones out is still visible as a rain wall on the skyline.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.9 – 1.21.11, or 26.1 – 26.2 (see the version table below)
• Fabric Loader 0.19.2+ on 1.21.x, 0.19.5+ on 26.x
• Fabric API
• Java 21 on 1.21.x, Java 25 on 26.x

Installation

1. Install Fabric Loader and Fabric API — or NeoForge, which needs neither
2. Drop the jar matching your Minecraft version and loader into your mods folder
3. Launch the game — the weather takes it from there

Jars are named localweather-<mod version>+<Minecraft version>[-loader].jar.
A plain name is the Fabric build; -quilt and -neoforge are the others.
For example, on Minecraft 26.1.2: localweather-1.4.0+26.1.2.jar for Fabric,
localweather-1.4.0+26.1.2-neoforge.jar for NeoForge.

Optional: Mod Menu for in-game mod info.

Versions & loaders

| Minecraft | Build target | Fabric API | Java |
| ——— | ———— | ———- | —- |
| 1.21.9 | -Pmc=1.21.9 | 0.134.1+1.21.9 | 21 |
| 1.21.10 | -Pmc=1.21.10 | 0.138.4+1.21.10 | 21 |
| 1.21.11 | -Pmc=1.21.11 | 0.141.6+1.21.11 | 21 |
| 26.1, 26.1.1, 26.1.2 | -Pmc=26.1.2 (default) | 0.155.3+26.1.2 | 25 |
| 26.2 | -Pmc=26.2 | 0.159.0+26.2 | 25 |

One repository builds every target; each is a file in versions/.
The 1.21.x and 26.x lines keep separate source directories because Minecraft is
named differently between them — see docs/loader-support.md.

| Loader | Status |
| —— | —— |
| Fabric | ✅ Primary supported loader |
| Quilt | ✅ 1.21.x only — Quilt publishes no intermediate namespace for 26.x, so no Quilt jar is built there |
| NeoForge | ✅ neoforge/ on 26.1.x — the simulation, the full client presentation and the server-side mixins, all from the same shared code as Fabric |
| Forge | 🚧 forge/ on 26.1.x, at the same level as NeoForge — server-side simulation from the same shared code, no client sync, not a release artifact |

See docs/loader-support.md for the full breakdown.

For mod developers

LocalWeatherAPI lets other mods query localized weather at any position.

import net.fentbusgaming.localweather.api.LocalWeatherAPI;

// What is the weather right here?
WeatherZone.WeatherType weather = LocalWeatherAPI.getWeatherAt(world, pos);

if (LocalWeatherAPI.isThunderingAt(world, pos)) {
    // lightning-rod logic, mob spawning, crop growth...
}

// Is this position under a moving storm core?
if (LocalWeatherAPI.isInStormCell(world, pos)) {
    // heavy rain, reduced visibility...
}

// Where is the weather coming from?
double windX = LocalWeatherAPI.getWindDirectionX();
double windZ = LocalWeatherAPI.getWindDirectionZ();

Also available: getWeatherInZone, getTargetWeatherInZone, getTransitionProgress, isRainingAt, isHailingAt, getStormCells, getStormCellAt, toZoneCoords and getZoneSizeBlocks.

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/rustybusgaming/LocalizedWeather.git
cd LocalizedWeather
./gradlew build            # default target (26.1.2)
./gradlew build -Pmc=26.2  # any target in versions/
./gradlew printTarget      # show the resolved target

Needs JDK 21 for the 1.21.x targets and JDK 25 for 26.x. You do not have
to install either: Gradle fetches a matching JDK on first build if your machine
has none. Jars land in build/libs/ as
localweather-<mod version>+<minecraft version>.jar.

On 1.21.9 the storm clouds, hail particles and rain wall are absent — Fabric API
for that version exposes no world-render hook. Everything else works there.

Credits

Idea by Mr. Random on Discord.

License

MIT