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Hi, I'm Gina.
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Welcome to Oxford Online English!
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In this lesson, you'll learn words and phrases to talk about the weather in English.
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After you watch, don't forget to check out our website: Oxford Online English dot com.
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In the video description, you can find a link to the full page of this lesson.
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Try the quiz and test your vocabulary skills!
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Ready for the lesson?
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Let's go!
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It's sunny.
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The sun is shining.
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It's bright.
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It's humid.
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The air feels heavy.
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It's sticky.
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It's too hot.
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There's a heatwave.
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To talk about the weather in English, you often use 'it' plus an adjective.
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Before, you heard some examples, including 'it's sunny', 'it's humid' and
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'it's too hot.'
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You can use 'be' in different forms to talk about the past or the future.
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For example 'It was sunny yesterday.'
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'It will be sunny tomorrow.'
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'It has been sunny recently.'
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You also heard 'There's a heatwave.'
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This is another common pattern to talk about the weather: use 'there is' or 'there
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are', plus a noun.
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There's a strong wind.
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It's windy.
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There's a gentle breeze.
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There's a thunderstorm.
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There's a lot of lightning.
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Sometimes, you use 'it' with a continuous verb to talk about the weather.
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It's raining hard.
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It's pouring down.
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It's hailing.
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It's snowing lightly.
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It's snowing heavily.
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It's raining lightly.
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It's a little wet outside.
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If you use a continuous verb, you can also make it past.
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For example 'It was raining hard all day yesterday.'
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'It was snowing lightly when we left.'
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To talk about the future, you *can* use a future continuous verb, but it's more common
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to use 'will' or 'going to' plus an infinitive.
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For example 'It's going to pour down soon.'
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'They say it will snow heavily at the weekend.'
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It's overcast.
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There's a lot of cloud.
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It's a grey day.
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There's one more common pattern.
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You can use 'it's a … day', and add an adjective before 'day'.
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You heard 'it's a grey day'.
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You could also say 'It's a cloudy day', or 'It's a bright day.'
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The forest is misty in the morning.
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It's a foggy day.
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There's some fog, but it's not too thick.
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'Fog' and 'mist' are similar, but not the same.
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Do you know the difference?
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Fog is basically cloud which is at ground level.
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Mist is caused by water droplets in the air.
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They're similar, but fog is generally thicker and lasts longer.
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Mist is thinner and normally disappears fast.
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Many places are misty in the morning, but the mist disappears as the sun comes up.
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There are some light clouds.
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It doesn't look like rain.
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If you hear 'it looks like rain', what will the sky look like?
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'It looks like rain' means that it's likely to rain very soon.
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So, the sky is probably overcast, with lots of heavy, dark clouds.
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There isn't a cloud in the sky.
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It's perfectly clear.
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If you describe the weather as 'clear', you mean that there are few or no clouds.
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You *also* mean that the air is clear: there's no mist, or fog, or haze, or anything similar.
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If it's clear, you can see a long way.
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It's icy.
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The river has frozen over.
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If you live somewhere cold, rivers, lakes and other bodies of water might freeze over.
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'Freeze over' means they freeze on top, but there's still liquid underneath.
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If it's really cold, the river might freeze solid.
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If the river has frozen solid, the whole thing is ice; there's no liquid water.
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There's a blizzard – you can hardly see ten metres!
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A blizzard is a kind of storm.
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To count as a blizzard, you need heavy snow and strong winds at the same time.
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The recent rain has caused severe flooding in some areas.
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The floods have caused millions of euros of damage.
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Heavy rain can cause floods – or flooding.
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'Flooding' is a gerund, but it's often used as a plain noun.
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In the sentences you saw, you could say 'floods' or 'flooding'.
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The hurricane is approaching the coast.
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It is predicted that the typhoon will make landfall in the next 24 hours.
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The storm will bring gale force winds, with gusts of up to 80 kilometres per hour.
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There are different words for strong winds and storms.
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A gale is defined by the wind force on the Beaufort scale.
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There are different definitions, but anything above a specific strength is a gale.
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What about hurricanes and typhoons?
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Do you know the difference?
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Hurricanes and typhoons are both powerful tropical storms, but they start in different
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places.
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Hurricanes form in the Atlantic Ocean, while typhoons form in the Pacific.
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That's all.
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Thanks for watching!