How to Change the Weather in Pokemon Sword and Shield

Trying to get a particular Pokemon on your team? You might want to know how to change the weather in Pokemon Sword and Shield to ensure that it spawns.

When you’re cracking through Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s end-game, or even if your job is just trying to collect them all, you’ll have noticed that the weather in the game actually affects the Pokemon that you’ll be able to find. It also affects certain elemental moves, so it can be handy to know how to change the weather in Pokemon Sword and Shield if you’re after something in particular. 

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How to Change the Weather in Pokemon Sword and Shield

We’ve got some good and some bad news. While the weather in Wild Areas changes organically based on your Nintendo Switch’s internal clock every day, you too can change the weather by using a classic tactic that all Animal Crossing: New Leaf fans will be familiar with: fast-forwarding the time on your console. If you’re curious about this, it’s simple: there are specific days that will correspond with specific weather types in Sword and Shield, and setting your Switch’s date and time settings to that will net you the appropriate weather. 

In order to change the date on your Nintendo Switch, you just have to navigate to System settings and change the in the Date and Time tab. If you’re trying to figure out if there’s a tried and true way to figure out which day of the year is going to have which type of weather, you can check out this video from AustinJohnPlays on Youtube which essentially sums it up as follows:

  • Cloudy – March 1 2020
  • Fog – June 1 2020
  • Hail – February 1 2020
  • Normal – May 1 2020
  • Raining – October 1 2020
  • Sandstorm – April 1 2020
  • Snow – December 1 2020
  • Sunny – July 1 2020
  • Thunderstorms – November 1 2020

With this information on hand, it should be easy for you to not only figure out how to change the weather in Pokemon Sword and Shield but also to ensure that it’s being swapped to the right weather for your purposes. Need a hand with anything else in the Galar region? Check out the following guides that we’ve put together:


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Ginny Woo
Ginny hails from just south of Mordor, and when she's not debating others about the One Ring then she's probably glued to an MMO or a JRPG. With Final Fantasy XIV, Destiny 2, and World of Warcraft on her plate, she's always got something to chat about and a sneaky guide up her sleeve. If writing's not on the cards, then she's probably drinking way too much coffee.