Rain Check FAQ

Yes. Rain Check is a free daily geography game: each day you name one U.S. city from its climate chart — its monthly average highs and lows, precipitation and snowfall — plus clues about its distance and direction, state, winter, summer, precipitation and snow. You have eight guesses, and there are 263 cities to choose from.

Study the climate chart, then type any of the 263 cities into the guess box and submit it. Each guess shows how its distance and direction, state, winter low, summer high, precipitation and snow compare with the hidden city, so every guess narrows the map. You have eight guesses.

Climate normals are 30-year averages of weather measurements. Rain Check uses NOAA’s U.S. Climate Normals for 1991–2020, which give the average high, low, precipitation and snowfall for each month of the year at a weather station. They describe what a month is typically like, not what happened in any one year.

Of the 263 cities in Rain Check, Syracuse, New York gets the most, averaging 127.8 inches of snow a year in NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals. Erie, Pennsylvania (104.3 inches), Rochester, New York (102 inches) and Buffalo, New York (95.4 inches) follow. That is a ranking within Rain Check’s cities, not of every place in the country.

Blue means a match, orange means close and grey (⚪ in the share grid) means a miss. Distance shows a compass arrow pointing from your guess toward the hidden city, with the miles between them; winter, summer, precip and snow show a simple up or down arrow for whether the true figure is higher or lower than your guess. State never has an arrow.

Precip is a city’s total precipitation for the year: rain plus the water in melted snow, which is how NOAA measures it. A snowy city can therefore look wetter than its rainfall alone would suggest. Snow is a separate clue and counts inches of snow itself, not melted water.

From NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, which publishes the U.S. Climate Normals for 1991–2020. Each city uses one weather station, usually an airport or weather-service office within 30 kilometers, and city locations come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 Gazetteer. The data and method page has the full details.

Because the chart shows climate normals, which are 30-year averages for 1991–2020, not a record of any one year. A single January can run far colder or warmer than the average, and a wet or dry year can land well off the yearly totals. The chart shows what a month is usually like.

Cities that would use the same weather station share one entry, named after the biggest of them, because their charts would be identical. Cambridge is part of Boston’s entry, for example, and Bellevue of Seattle’s. Type the suburb’s name and the guess box offers the city it belongs to.

Rain Check has 263 cities you can guess, covering all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Any of them can be a guess, and 172 of them can also be the city of the day.

A new daily puzzle unlocks at midnight in your own time zone. Everyone gets the same city on the same calendar date.

No. Hints never break a streak. Free hints add a light bulb to your shared result, while hints unlocked by watching an optional ad do not.

Yes. The archive lists every past daily puzzle. Archive rounds count toward your statistics, but only today’s puzzle extends your streak.

Yes. The daily puzzle, the archive and unlimited mode are all free to play, with no account required.

Rain Check is made by Guessday, an independent site of original daily guessing games. It is not affiliated with NOAA or the National Weather Service.