Several parts combine into one character.

嵐 is a compound ideograph that compresses an entire weather phenomenon into two strokes' worth of meaning: 山 (mountain) + 風 (wind). The composite reads as "wind that arises from the mountains" — and yet across the three CJK regions, this single image evolved in dramatically different directions. The same character means three meaningfully different things depending on which language you read it in. Mainland China simplified to 岚.

Korean reading "ram." 嵐 is largely defunct in modern Korean — used primarily in personal names (especially women's given names like 람 or 라) and place names where its archaic literary register is desired. For "storm," Korean uses 暴風 (pokpung) or (taepung, typhoon). 嵐 surfaces in Buddhist and classical literature when invoking the imagery of mist-shrouded mountain hermitages.

Mandarin lán, 2nd tone (simplified 岚). Mandarin developed 嵐 in a more atmospheric and aesthetic direction: 山岚 (shānlán, "mountain mist" / "mountain vapor") — the bluish haze that seems to rise off forested mountains at dawn. This is a poetic, painterly term celebrated in Chinese landscape painting (山水画). Mandarin uses 暴风 (bàofēng) for "storm" and 台风 (táifēng) for "typhoon," not 嵐.

Japanese gives 嵐 the most dramatic semantic weight of all three regions. On-reading ラン (ran) is rare in everyday speech. Kun-reading あらし (arashi) is the everyday word for storm — meaning a serious tempest with wind and rain at typhoon intensity. Japanese culture treats arashi as one of the great forces of nature: 嵐の前の静けさ (arashi no mae no shizukesa, "the calm before the storm") is a familiar idiom; 砂嵐 (suna-arashi, sandstorm) extends the concept; and the wildly popular boy band 嵐 (Arashi, active 1999-2020) made the character a household word across East Asia, exporting the Japanese reading "Arashi" as a recognizable name in Korean and Chinese pop culture. When Japanese fans see 嵐, they often think of the band before they think of the weather.

Memory aid: mountain (山) plus wind (風) — Korean and Chinese keep it as gentle "mountain mist," while Japanese makes it a furious "storm." Same character, three different intensities.