Quiahuitl's patron in the day sign count is Tonatiuh, the sun itself, a notably different patron from Tlaloc, the rain god who might seem the more obvious governor of a storm sign, and this assignment of the sun rather than the rain deity to the rain sign is recorded in the sources as it stands, without an explanation connecting the choice to the sign's difficult, sorcery touched augury. Its direction is west, the sixth instance of that direction across the twenty sign count, standing at the recurring interval the four direction rotation follows through Calli, Mazatl, Ozomahtli and Cuauhtli before reaching Quiahuitl.
Quiahuitl is not a year bearer, sitting between Tecpatl at eighteen and Xochitl at twenty, outside the spacing that marks the select four signs able to open a solar year. Tonatiuh's patronage of Quiahuitl as a day sign sits alongside his separate appearance paired beside Mictlantecuhtli in the patronage of Trecena 10, opening on Tecpatl the flint sign, a hard, war favouring week where the sun's presence reinforces courage and success in battle, a considerably more triumphant register than his quieter governance here over a sign the readers treated with real caution. Tonatiuh's demand for the nourishment of sacrifice to continue his own daily passage across the sky gives his patronage of the storm sign a further register beyond simple contrast with Tlaloc, since both readings, sun and rain alike, ultimately rest on the same Mexica theology of cost matched to survival.