Seasons and temperature

Last updated 25 August 2026. Report a discrepancy through the GeoNations Discord.

GeoNations uses an in game calendar and a temperature system measured in degrees. Seasons affect day length, weather, terrain, mobs, crops, and player temperature. Temperature thresholds can stop healing, drain hunger, reduce movement speed, cause freezing, or cause burning.

Where seasons apply

Seasons and temperature run in the overworld. Temperature also runs in the Nether, with its own flat rule (below). The hub and the lobby are exempt entirely: temperature does not apply there at all.

The seasons plugin owns the clock, so days and nights stretch and shrink with the season. Night still skips when 25% of online players sleep at once — and a bed always sets your spawn. See Beds and homes.

The calendar

One game day is 20 real minutes, always, in every month of the year. What changes month to month is how those 20 minutes are split between daylight and night. Deep winter gives you 7 minutes of daylight and 13 of night. High summer flips it.

A January night is 13 real minutes of mobs. A July night is 7. Plan mining trips and raids around that.

When the seasons turn

A full year is 365 game days, or slightly more than five real days. Each season lasts approximately 30 real hours.

The cycle is automatic and it announces itself in chat (WINTER » has taken the world.). That line is your notice to go check your farms. Each season is also split internally into sub seasons, which is why the colour of the world drifts through a season rather than snapping, and why the first snow of winter lands a while after the season starts.

Reading your temperature

Your temperature sits on your action bar in brackets, all the time, in Celsius by default.

Every number on this page is Celsius, because that is the server default.

The display updates every two seconds and moves 20% of the remaining distance toward the calculated value on each update. A change in biome or shelter therefore appears gradually rather than immediately. The displayed value may continue changing for several updates after the environment changes.

Temperature calculation

The temperature calculation has two stages.

Stage one, the world. Season base, plus weather, plus time of day, then the result is hard clamped into the current season's band (table below). Whatever the sum was, it comes out between that season's minimum and maximum.

Stage two, you. On top of that clamped number the plugin adds: biome, height, water, sprinting, velocity, armour, food and drink, held items, nearby blocks. None of stage two is clamped.

So the season band is a floor and a ceiling on the world, not on you. Summer tops out at 40, but a summer desert reads 66 before you have put on a single piece of armour, because the desert's +26 is added after the clamp. That also means the desert survives every season. A desert in fall is still a desert.

Season bands

The winter maximum is -4. In a neutral biome without personal modifiers, the temperature therefore remains below freezing throughout winter. The minimum of -18 is also the threshold where freezing damage begins.

Each game day rolls its own base temperature inside the band, and the next day's roll can only move two degrees from the day before. So the temperature changes slowly: a cold spell builds over several days and eases off over several more. If today is very cold, tomorrow will be close to it, and you have time to prepare for the day after.

Time of day

Time of day swings the world temperature between -5 and +3 before the clamp. The shape matters more than the exact ticks: the heat sits flat at +3 from noon through the whole afternoon, the cold sits flat at -5 for most of the night, and there are short ramps between them at dawn and dusk.

Cross the desert at night. It is eight degrees cooler than crossing at noon, and in summer those eight degrees can keep you under the burning threshold. In winter the same rule works against you: the night is when the world is at its coldest.

Weather

Applied before the clamp, so in summer it usually gets swallowed by the band and in winter it can push you to the floor. Rain is free cooling in a heat crisis, worth knowing when you are stuck in a badlands with no water.

How often it rains is also seasonal. Winter and fall each roll an extra one in three chance of downfall per day. Spring gets natural weather only. Summer has natural downfall switched off entirely. Do not count on a summer rainstorm.

Biome offsets, the complete table

The biome offset is added after the season clamp, so it applies in full, all year. It is the single biggest lever on your temperature and the one you control by choosing where to stand.

The practical spread is 38 degrees between a frozen peak and a desert, at the same moment, in the same season. Two players on the same server can be freezing and burning at the same time.

Height

Above sea level the air cools — outside winter. Every block above Y64 takes 0.08 off your temperature: about -2.5 at Y96, -5 at Y128, -10 at Y192, -15 at Y256. A mountain summit is fifteen degrees colder than its base on height alone, before the mountain biome's own -4 or -12. A sky base is a cold base. If you build one, heat it.

In winter the height rule is replaced. Above Y64 altitude does nothing at all; below Y64, every ten blocks of depth adds approximately one degree: +6 at Y0 and +12 near the bottom of the world. This can combine with the +5 cave biome offset, making underground areas warmer than the winter surface.

Armour

Armour adds heat. All of it. There is no cooling armour, so in summer every piece works against you, and in winter every piece is a blanket.

Each slot is worth a quarter of the set value, so you can mix. Two leather pieces and two diamond is +12.5, which is a real winter loadout that still protects you.

Water, rain and boats

Water is the strongest single cooling tool you have. In summer, a dug pool beside your desert road is worth more than any armour choice. In winter it is a trap of exactly the same size: falling in a river is -10 on a world already sitting at -18.

Three things count as touching water, and two of them surprise people:

• Being in water. Obvious.
• Being in powder snow. Same penalty. Powder snow in winter is a double punishment.
• Standing out in the rain with open sky above you. Get under a roof and the soak stops, even though it is still raining.

A boat keeps you dry. Sitting in a boat, the water penalty does not apply to you, unless it is raining on the boat. Crossing a winter lake by boat is safe. Swimming it is how you die.

Nearby blocks

Four rules govern all of them, and knowing them is the difference between a heated base and a decorated one:

1. Strength falls off linearly with distance. The listed value is at your feet. At half the range you get half, at the edge you get nothing. Put the fire in the room, not down the corridor.
2. Line of sight is required past 1.4 blocks. A campfire behind a wall does nothing. A campfire behind a closed door does nothing. If you want a warm room, the heat source has to be visible from where you stand.
3. Only the strongest source of each sign counts. Twenty torches are worth exactly one torch. The plugin keeps your single strongest heat source and your single strongest cooling source and adds those two together. One campfire in line of sight does the whole job.
4. A nether portal works the other way round in the Nether. On the overworld side it heats you by 8. On the Nether side it cools you by 8.

Several of these also work in your hand. Holding a torch, lantern or campfire is +7. Holding a lava bucket is +15. Holding a soul torch, soul campfire or soul lantern is -7. Ice or packed ice is -6, blue ice is -15. The ice items and the lantern keep working underwater, the flames do not.

The Nether

The Nether has no seasons, no biome offsets and no height effect. It is a flat 25, plus your own modifiers: sprinting, armour, food, what you hold, and what is near you. Twenty five is comfortable. What cooks you in the Nether is the lava, at +22 within seven blocks, with the same falloff and line of sight rules as everything else. So there is no cool roof over a lava sea, but a wall of blackstone between you and the lake is worth more than any elevation.

There is no End here — the End is disabled network-wide. No strongholds worth hunting, no end portals, no elytra from end cities (the only elytra this server will ever hand out is the invite-event trophy).

The threshold ladder

Everything above is arithmetic. This is where the arithmetic starts costing you. Cold rungs fire at or below their number, heat rungs at or past theirs.

Cold

Heat

The heat thresholds begin by stopping natural healing, then add movement reduction and hunger before burning begins.

Sprinting, speed and food

Sprinting heats you, up to +4. It builds while you sprint and takes several seconds to shed once you stop. Four degrees does not sound like much until you are at 61 and the fire line is 62. In the desert, walk.

Movement speed provides a cooling modifier. The value scales with velocity and is doubled while gliding. Ordinary walking produces little or no visible change, while high elytra speed can produce a substantial reduction. Elytra travel can therefore increase cold exposure during winter.

Drink a water bottle and you get -10 for five minutes. Best portable cooling in the game. Carry a stack when you go into sand. A near full food bar is worth +5 (your hunger needs to be at 18 of 20 or better). Eat before you go out into a blizzard.

Warnings

Two warnings exist. The action bar replaces your temperature readout with HEATSTROKE or FROSTBITE the moment you are in trouble, immediately. The chat warning is the long version telling you what to do about it, and it is rate limited to once every 20 seconds. So if you are overheating and chat has gone quiet, you are not safe. You are just inside the cooldown. Trust the action bar.

Two particle effects are information rather than decoration: you start visibly sweating at 40, five degrees before your healing stops, and breath fogs below 0. You do not see your own breath, only other players', so watch someone else's face to learn how cold the air is where they stand.

Seasons and your claim

The seasons plugin is integrated with Lands, and there are four region flags for it. All four are staff levers, not something you can toggle on your own land. You cannot buy your way out of winter by claiming a chunk.

Calculation examples

Summer desert at noon

The summer world temperature can reach its maximum of 40 during the afternoon. A desert then adds 26 after the seasonal limit, producing a temperature of 66 before armour, water, food, or nearby blocks are counted. Natural healing stops at 45, hunger begins at 52, and burning begins at 62.

Summer desert at night

At night, the world temperature can fall to the summer minimum of 20. The desert offset raises this to 46. Leather does not add heat above 25. A water bottle can then reduce the value by 10, producing approximately 36 before other modifiers. This is below all heat thresholds.

Winter plains at night

The winter minimum is -18 and plains have no biome offset. A cold winter night can therefore reach the freezing threshold without a cold biome or height modifier.

Winter shelter

Starting from -18, a full leather set can add 20 and a nearby campfire can add up to 15. A roof prevents the additional water modifier from rain. The resulting temperature is above the cold thresholds, although the exact display changes gradually because of the update smoothing.

Lush cave at Y0 during winter

A base value of -18 receives +5 from the lush cave biome and approximately +6 from being below Y64. The resulting value is approximately -7 before equipment and block effects. This is below the hunger threshold but above the slowness and freezing thresholds.

Frozen peaks at Y200 during winter

The winter minimum of -18 and the frozen peaks offset of -12 produce -30. Altitude cooling does not apply in winter, so height adds nothing here. This reaches the maximum movement reduction and is below the freezing threshold. Armour and visible heat sources are required to offset the combined biome and height modifiers.