Biome temperature decides rain, snow or nothing — and 18 biomes get no weather at all
67 biomes in 26.3. Every biome at temperature 2.0 is dry, all six remaining dry ones are in the End, and only 10 biomes snow at every height.
Biome temperature is not a flavour value. It decides whether water freezes, whether falling weather is rain or snow, and it interacts with a separate precipitation flag that switches weather off entirely. Every number below is counted from Mojang's shipped biome files for 26.3 — the same data the browser on this page renders.
The three weather groups
67 biomes split cleanly:
| biomes | |
|---|---|
| no precipitation at all | 18 |
| snow (precipitation, temperature < 0.15) | 10 |
| rain | 39 |
Only ten biomes snow at every height:
frozen_ocean, frozen_peaks, frozen_river, grove, ice_spikes, jagged_peaks, snowy_beach, snowy_plains, snowy_slopes, snowy_taiga
Snow feels more common than that — partly because those biomes are large and visually distinctive, and partly because temperature drops with height. Above about Y 80 every block loses a little warmth, so a cold rain biome — windswept hills, a taiga — snows on its peaks once it falls below 0.15 there. Everywhere-snow is still just 15% of the list.
The dry 18 have exactly two causes
This is the tidy part, and it is worth knowing because it means you never have to look up "does it rain here" for these:
- Every biome at temperature 2.0 is dry. All twelve of them, with no exceptions —
badlands,eroded_badlands,wooded_badlands,desert,savanna,savanna_plateau,windswept_savanna, and all five Nether biomes (nether_wastes,crimson_forest,warped_forest,soul_sand_valley,basalt_deltas). - The remaining six are the End, and all six sit at temperature 0.5:
the_end,end_barrens,end_highlands,end_midlands,small_end_islands,the_void.
So dryness has two entirely separate reasons — too hot, or not a place with a sky. There is no third case and no mid-temperature desert-like biome that quietly has no weather.
2.0 is a ceiling, −0.7 is the floor
Temperature runs from −0.7 to 2.0 across 17 distinct values. The two coldest biomes in the game are frozen_peaks and jagged_peaks at −0.7 — colder than snowy_plains, which is why peaks stay iced over at heights where the plains below are merely snowy.
The value matters at build time because water freezing, ice forming and snow layers all key off it, and the mountain biomes are the only place the game goes below −0.5.
Colour is reused far more than it looks
- 12 distinct water colours across all 67 biomes.
- 7 biomes override the grass colour at all.
Most biomes take their grass and foliage from the temperature/downfall gradient rather than from a hardcoded value, which is why a swamp looks so obviously hand-set: it is one of the few that is. If you are building a resource pack and expecting 67 water tints to adjust, there are twelve.
Where this bites in practice
A farm that needs rain will never tick in a badlands or a savanna, and no amount of waiting changes that — those are in the dry 18, not merely low-downfall. Likewise a powder-snow farm only works where it actually snows — the ten snow biomes, or high enough in a cold rain biome — not in anything that merely looks cold. A snow golem is looser than both: it lays its trail anywhere and only melts in the hot biomes and the Nether. Check the biome's temperature and precipitation flag before you build, not the screenshot.