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One is a coded observation defined by treaty; the other is a picture a designer chose. They are unrelated.
The dots, stars and triangles plotted beside a circle on a synoptic chart are present-weather codes, defined by the World Meteorological Organization, recording what was observed at a station at a stated moment. The sun-behind-a-cloud on a phone is a summary of a forecast period drawn by whoever made the app, standardised by nobody. That is why two apps can show different icons for the same forecast — and why a chart symbol means the same thing everywhere.
Forecast pictograms and synoptic present-weather symbols look related and are unconnected systems.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Present weather symbols | Forecast pictograms |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | lines and dots, stars, triangles | circles, abstract, lines and dots |
| Present weather symbols | Forecast pictograms | |
|---|---|---|
| Defined by | The WMO Manual on Codes, internationally | Nobody — each service designs its own |
| Reports | What was observed, at one moment, at one station | What is forecast, summarised over a period |
| Intensity | Shown by repetition — one dot light, three heavy | Shown by picking a different picture, or not at all |
| Two sources agreeing | Identical symbols, because the code is the same | Legitimately different icons from the same underlying data |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Forecast pictograms — Forecast pictograms and synoptic present-weather symbols look related and are unconnected systems. | Commonly confused with Present weather symbols — Forecast pictograms and synoptic present-weather symbols look related and are unconnected systems. |
The synoptic codes are standardised and the pictograms are not, which is the whole of the distinction. No body has ever attempted to standardise consumer forecast icons.
WMO Manual on Codes (WMO-No. 306)
World Meteorological Organization · retrieved 2026-08-21
The international standard defining synoptic codes, present-weather symbols and the station model. Authoritative worldwide for the notation. It defines how an observation is coded and plotted, not how a forecast is presented to the public.
Met Office guidance and warning service
Met Office · retrieved 2026-08-21
The United Kingdom's national meteorological service. Authoritative for British warnings, the shipping forecast and public presentation. Warning colour schemes are national and differ between services.
A building's assembly point is a safe place to stand once you are outside. A ship's muster station is a staffed step in a procedure: you are counted against a roll, briefed, and if necessary allocated to a survival craft, which is why it has a letter or a number and appears on your cabin door card. Both are green, both show grouped figures, and both are called an assembly point in ordinary speech — and treating a muster station as somewhere merely to wait is the misunderstanding drills exist to correct.
Follow the teeth. They always point downhill. Teeth running outward and away from the crest line mean the ground was built up — an embankment carrying a road or railway above the surrounding land. Teeth running inward, towards the line, mean the ground was cut away — a cutting taking the route below it. The two marks are deliberate mirror images of each other, which makes them easy to tell apart once you know the rule and almost impossible to guess if you do not, because both read as a line with hatching. This is one of the few map conventions where knowing a single rule settles the question permanently.
Land cover on a Japanese map is drawn as one small motif repeated across an area rather than as a single symbol, and the categories come in pairs that differ by exactly one feature. Paddy against dry field is two small strokes drawn two ways. Broadleaf against needleleaf is a rounded canopy against a pointed one on the same trunk. Timber bamboo against dwarf sasa is woodland against ground cover. In every case the pair covers the whole of a category between them, so identifying one is really a matter of deciding which half of a pair you are looking at — which is why these six are worth reading together rather than one at a time.
A circle drawn around a Japanese map symbol raises its rank. The same 文 character is a primary or lower secondary school on its own and a high school inside a circle; the same crossed truncheons are a neighbourhood police box on their own and a full police station inside a circle. Once you know that, three separate identification problems collapse into one rule, and the reason the marks look so alike stops being a defect of the map and becomes the point of it. The circles around the public-administration marks work slightly differently and are the exception worth knowing: there the distinction is not plain-versus-circled but what sits inside the circle, and those three are genuinely easy to confuse at map scale.