Weather and seasons

Your place

• Grove uses your place for:
  • the position of the sun and the moon,
  • the times and colours of sunrise and sunset,
  • your climate, which sets the seasons and, with them, the rain, unless you choose one yourself (see Choose your seasons),
• The first time Grove opens, it asks "Where do you live?". Tap Choose my city, or Skip.
• Change it any time in Settings → Valley and calendar → Your sky. You can:
  • search for your city in a list built into the app,
  • Enter coordinates: a latitude and a longitude from any map. Grove names the nearest city, or
  • Guess from my time zone.
• Grove never reads your phone's location, so it needs no permission. It keeps the place on your phone, and in your backups.
• If you skip, Grove guesses from your phone's time zone.
  • It uses latitude 25° north and a longitude from the time zone (the offset in minutes ÷ 4).
  • For India (UTC+5:30) this lands in the monsoon climate.
  • The guess is always north of the equator. If you live in the south, choose your city, or your seasons will be six months off.

Three climates

• Grove picks one of three climates from your place:

  Climate	Where
  Monsoon	Latitude 5° to 29.5° and longitude 66° to 101°, or latitude 29.5° to 35° and longitude 66° to 79°
  Southern	Everywhere else south of the equator
  Northern	Everywhere else north of the equator, and on it

• The monsoon area covers India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and nearby places. North of latitude 29.5° it stops at longitude 79°, so most of Tibet is not in it.

• The northern and southern climates have four seasons. The monsoon climate has its own four.

Seasons

What each season looks like

• Spring: fresh green grass, drifts of wildflowers and pink petals falling. Oaks flower pink.
• Summer: deep green grass and summer flowers. Oaks flower cream, and seed heads nod on the tall grass.
• Autumn: orange, gold and red trees on the hills, and falling leaves. Leaves lie on the meadow and under the oaks. Ferns and sunflowers turn autumn colours; pines stay green.
• Winter (northern and southern): snow covers the meadow and the hills, with grass tips poking through. Snow lies on the mountains, the bridge and the plants, the river's edges freeze, and snowflakes fall.
  • There are no butterflies, no fireflies and no jumping trout in this winter.
• After 100 days of keeping your habits, small warm lights hang along the bridge's rail each winter, the mild winter too, and glow after dark (see Rewards for steady care). Added in 1.7
• Hot summer (monsoon climate): dry, sun-bleached grass the colour of straw.
• Monsoon: the greenest grass of the year, and rain on most days. Wildflowers bloom in the grass. Added in 1.8
• After the rains: green grass, wildflowers and some rain. Added in 1.8
• Mild winter (monsoon climate): cool green ground. No snow falls in the valley.
• The mountains with your trails keep some snow on top all year. They have the most in winter.
  • With Ridge mountains on, the mountains are misty ridges with pines, and have no snow in any season. Added in 1.7

Rain

Rainbows

• A rainbow only shows when the sun is up.
• You get a rainbow in these cases:
  • All habits done on a rainy day: while the rain plan says it should rain, the rain stops and a full rainbow shows.
  • All habits done, and a shower ended in the last 1.5 hours: the rainbow fades slowly over those 1.5 hours.
  • Just after any shower, even if not everything is done: a softer rainbow for about 35 minutes.

• The rainbow stands opposite the sun, with a faint second bow above it.
• A few clouds stay around the rainbow.
• In the monsoon, afternoon showers are common, so finishing your habits in the afternoon often brings a rainbow.

Clouds

• Clouds show how today is going (see How Grove works):
  • A new day starts under a clear sky: from midnight until sunrise, what is left to do brings no clouds. They gather in the two hours after the sun comes up. Added in 1.7
  • With nothing done, the sky is at its cloudiest.
  • Finishing habits clears some of the clouds.
  • When everything is done, the valley glows golden and the sun shines brighter. After dark, the moon glows wider, twice as many fireflies come out, and on a clear night a shooting star crosses the sky as you finish. Added in 1.6
• Rain adds heavy clouds on top of this.
• Clouds turn warm at sunrise and sunset, and dark blue-grey at night.

The sun, the moon and the time of day

• The valley follows the real clock. Morning, day, evening and night have their own light.
• The sun and the moon are where they really are in your sky.
  • You look toward the south (toward the north if you live south of the equator). The sun rises on the left and sets on the right.
  • Left to right follows how far east or west they are, so right overhead is the middle. In the tropics the moon, and in summer the sun, can pass almost straight overhead; they still glide smoothly across. Added in 1.1
  • The higher they are in the real sky, the higher they are in the picture.
• They rise out of the hills and set into them, rather than appearing in the open sky. Added in 1.1

• The sun rises at your real sunrise and sets at your real sunset. The colours of dawn and dusk follow the real sun, not fixed hours. In summer the evening light comes later; in winter it comes earlier.
• At sunrise and sunset the snow and high rock of the trail mountains glow rose, as real peaks do, most on the side toward the sun. A cloudy sky hides most of it. Added in 1.3
• The moon is big, and it shows its real phase: new moon, crescent, half, and full moon. By day it is pale.

• At night there are stars, and, except in winter or rain, fireflies.
• After dark, a lantern glows on each of the four posts at the ends of the bridge. Added in 1.4
• Zen mode has a taller sky. On a clear night it shows the Milky Way. By day a hawk circles there. A wide window, with the valley beside your habits, shows them too.
• The "Your valley" home-screen widget shows a day picture of your valley from 7 am to 7 pm, and a night picture with the real moon the rest of the time.

Shooting stars Added in 1.4

• On a clear night, a shooting star crosses the sky now and then: about one every few minutes. You see them on the Valley page and in zen mode.
• They come by chance, so each time you open zen mode or Grove, the sky shows different ones. Added in 1.6
• They need a dark, clear sky. None come by day, in the rain or under thick cloud, and a passing cloud can hide one.
• They cross the open sky above the mountains, never in front of them.
• Now and then one is a fireball: bigger, slower and warm orange, with sparks falling behind it.
• The first shooting star you see is a find on the Unlocked page.

Meteor showers

• On a few nights each year there is a meteor shower, as in the real sky. Many more shooting stars come then, all streaming out from one point high above the valley, and more of them are fireballs.

• A shower is at its best on the night it peaks, and fainter a night or two either side. A night runs from evening to morning, so the small hours count with the evening before.

  Shower	Best night	How many
  Quadrantids	3 January	Many
  Lyrids	22 April	Some
  Eta Aquariids	5 May	Some
  Perseids	12 August	A great many
  Orionids	21 October	Some
  Leonids	17 November	A few
  Geminids	13 December	The most of all

• The nights are the same every year, so now and then the real peak is a night before or after. Grove shows each shower wherever your place is.