Episode 9 - Britain's Favourite Small Talk Topic: WEATHER! -Now you can join in with confidence! 🥶
Emma's ESL English - A podcast by Emma - Tuesdays

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I live in the UK and we LOVE talking about the weather. It's our most common small talk conversation, with strangers and friends! We have so much vocabulary to talk about the weather so let's learn some of that today. I know you learned 'It's raining' and 'It's sunny' at school, but can you use any more interesting or creative terms to describe the weather where you live? In this episode we will look at some weather vocabulary and some idioms and sayings in the UK. Hopefully it will give you some more interesting ways to talk about the weather with your friends. In this episode I started with a phrase taken from one of my first podcasts. 'We get a lot of weather here.' As I mentioned in the podcast, on my birthday we went out and during the same day we had warm sunny weather, rain and hailstones. Starting from good weather today's vocabulary included: 'like an oven' - very hot outside 'hot and sticky' - hot and humid 'red hot' - very hot Foggy: 'Can't see a hand in front of my face' and 'pea souper' - both mean thick fog 'Pea-souper' was originally used to describe the thick smog in London during the industrial revolution. This smog was very dangerous and made it hard for people to see and breathe. These days smog is a lot less common and not so thick in the UK but this phrase is still sometimes used to describe fog. Definition Cloudy: 'Overcast' - when there is dense cloud cover and you can't see any blue sky 'Something's brewing' - when there are storm clouds and it looks like bad weather is coming When I visited Florence it was overcast. Rain: 'Fine rain' and 'drizzle' - when it looks foggy but it's actually raining 'It's really coming down', 'it's sheeting down', 'it's hammering down' - all mean heavy rain. Idiom - 'It's raining cats and dogs' - heavy rain Idiom - 'It's coming down in stair rods' - heavy rain. Stair rods are the vertical poles on a staircase (see below picture) so it means straight down heavy rain. Hail: 'the size of golf balls' - usually an exaggeration, but it can happen Thunder and Lightning In the UK we often say 'thunder and lightning' to mean a storm, whereas Americans will usually say 'stormy weather.' Phrase - 'clap of thunder' - the sound thunder makes Scottish Idiom - 'Blowing a hoolie out there' (spelled both hoolie and hooley) - big storm, wind and rain. Trivia 'There's gold at the end of the rainbow' - This is an idiom. It came originally from Irish stories about leprechauns leaving gold. However it's now used not to describe weather, but instead to mean something difficult to achieve or have. Definition 'Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in the morning, sailor's warning.' Means if there is a red sunset it will be a lovely day tomorrow. If there is a red sunrise it will be bad weather today. Is this true where you live? Please let me know in the comments below. Remember, this week I have a supplementary playlist of weather songs! You can find it on YouTube Do you have any good weather songs where you come from?