Weather and sky in Minecraft: morning mist, storms, auroras and the Milky Way

In vanilla, the weather is just rain or no rain. Here mornings, storms and nights each have their own mood. It's always there, there's nothing to equip, and none of it changes the game. The animals have their own page.

Download .jar CurseForge

Part of Cassonade, a free vanilla+ mod for Minecraft 26.3 (Fabric)

A birch forest at dawn, the far trees fading into a light mist

Green and violet auroras over a snowy plain at night, with the Milky Way and a crescent moon

The Milky Way, a faint band high in the night sky, above an open plain with flowers in the grass

A sandstorm over the desert, the dunes fading into a yellow haze, sand blowing past

A blizzard over snowy hills, the slopes fading into a white haze, snowflakes blowing past

How it works

Some mornings start in mist, the rain brings storms, and clear nights are worth looking up at.

In the sky

Milky Way: a faint band across the night, placed and shaped like the real one, with its bright heart and dark rift. It turns with the stars.
Auroras hang to the north, green and violet, every other clear night over snowy land.
Shooting stars cross the sky now and then on a clear night.
Heat lightning flickers silently, low on the horizon, on some warm evenings.

Mist, rain and storms

Morning mist: now and then, about one morning in eight, the land wakes in a mist that hides the sky and the distance, then lifts as the sun climbs, thinner up high and gone underground.
Blizzards and sandstorms: when it rains, the snowy lands get a blizzard and the deserts and badlands a sandstorm, where vanilla shows nothing. The view closes in to some 30 blocks, the sky is gone, snow or sand blows past on a wind you can hear, muffled once you're back inside, and it's even thicker in a thunderstorm, when the wind turns into a gale. A good time to check the barometer before you go out. The sandstorm also lays sand on the dunes, never on what you built, and it piles up where it would for real: in the hollows and at the foot of a dune or a wall, on the side away from the wind, up to three layers.
Layers of sand: three sand make six layers, like snow, to place and stack the same way. A shovel takes them off one at a time.
The rain falls in pale grey streaks, the color of water, not blue.
After the rain, the trees keep dripping for a minute, from every leaf the rain reached.
Windows: drops bead and run down the glass the rain reaches, then dry up one by one; in the cold, frost creeps in from the corners, deeper at night.

Around you

Breath shows in the cold: in snowy lands, players and villagers breathe out small puffs of mist.
Up high, specks carried by the wind rush past.
Dust falls slowly from cave ceilings, where your torches catch it.
Waterfalls splash where they land, on the ground or in a pool, harder the higher they fall, with a little mist at the foot of a tall one.

What you hear

Thunder comes after the flash, later and duller the farther the lightning struck.
Rain on the roof: under a roof, the rain and the thunder are muffled; leaves are no roof.
Caves send every sound back as an echo, short in a passage, long in a great hall.
Waves grow all around you as you near a shore: a dull roar from afar, clear at the water's edge, where a line of foam runs up the shore with each wave and water splashes where it breaks. Out at sea, far from any shore, a quiet swell remains.
Under water, sounds turn muffled and quieter while your head is below the surface, seem to come from everywhere, those from above the water grow faint, and only a flooded cave or a ceiling of blocks gives them a dull echo; the music and the menus stay clear.

Questions

Does it change how the game plays?

No. Mist never hides the way; a blizzard or a sandstorm can, like a real one, but it stays outside your house.

Does it work on a server without the mod?

Almost all of it: it happens on your own computer, so it works anywhere. Only the sand that sandstorms lay needs the mod on the server, since it changes the world.

Can I turn the sounds down?

Yes: they all follow the game's Ambient/Environment slider, in the Music & Sound options.