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  • Hi, I'm Gina.

  • Welcome to Oxford Online English!

  • In this lesson, you'll learn words and phrases to talk about the weather in English.

  • After you watch, don't forget to check out our website: Oxford Online English dot com.

  • In the video description, you can find a link to the full page of this lesson.

  • Try the quiz and test your vocabulary skills!

  • Ready for the lesson?

  • Let's go!

  • It's sunny.

  • The sun is shining.

  • It's bright.

  • It's humid.

  • The air feels heavy.

  • It's sticky.

  • It's too hot.

  • There's a heatwave.

  • To talk about the weather in English, you often use 'it' plus an adjective.

  • Before, you heard some examples, including 'it's sunny', 'it's humid' and

  • 'it's too hot.'

  • You can use 'be' in different forms to talk about the past or the future.

  • For example 'It was sunny yesterday.'

  • 'It will be sunny tomorrow.'

  • 'It has been sunny recently.'

  • You also heard 'There's a heatwave.'

  • This is another common pattern to talk about the weather: use 'there is' or 'there

  • are', plus a noun.

  • There's a strong wind.

  • It's windy.

  • There's a gentle breeze.

  • There's a thunderstorm.

  • There's a lot of lightning.

  • Sometimes, you use 'it' with a continuous verb to talk about the weather.

  • It's raining hard.

  • It's pouring down.

  • It's hailing.

  • It's snowing lightly.

  • It's snowing heavily.

  • It's raining lightly.

  • It's a little wet outside.

  • If you use a continuous verb, you can also make it past.

  • For example 'It was raining hard all day yesterday.'

  • 'It was snowing lightly when we left.'

  • To talk about the future, you *can* use a future continuous verb, but it's more common

  • to use 'will' or 'going to' plus an infinitive.

  • For example 'It's going to pour down soon.'

  • 'They say it will snow heavily at the weekend.'

  • It's overcast.

  • There's a lot of cloud.

  • It's a grey day.

  • There's one more common pattern.

  • You can use 'it's a … day', and add an adjective before 'day'.

  • You heard 'it's a grey day'.

  • You could also say 'It's a cloudy day', or 'It's a bright day.'

  • The forest is misty in the morning.

  • It's a foggy day.

  • There's some fog, but it's not too thick.

  • 'Fog' and 'mist' are similar, but not the same.

  • Do you know the difference?

  • Fog is basically cloud which is at ground level.

  • Mist is caused by water droplets in the air.

  • They're similar, but fog is generally thicker and lasts longer.

  • Mist is thinner and normally disappears fast.

  • Many places are misty in the morning, but the mist disappears as the sun comes up.

  • There are some light clouds.

  • It doesn't look like rain.

  • If you hear 'it looks like rain', what will the sky look like?

  • 'It looks like rain' means that it's likely to rain very soon.

  • So, the sky is probably overcast, with lots of heavy, dark clouds.

  • There isn't a cloud in the sky.

  • It's perfectly clear.

  • If you describe the weather as 'clear', you mean that there are few or no clouds.

  • You *also* mean that the air is clear: there's no mist, or fog, or haze, or anything similar.

  • If it's clear, you can see a long way.

  • It's icy.

  • The river has frozen over.

  • If you live somewhere cold, rivers, lakes and other bodies of water might freeze over.

  • 'Freeze over' means they freeze on top, but there's still liquid underneath.

  • If it's really cold, the river might freeze solid.

  • If the river has frozen solid, the whole thing is ice; there's no liquid water.

  • There's a blizzardyou can hardly see ten metres!

  • A blizzard is a kind of storm.

  • To count as a blizzard, you need heavy snow and strong winds at the same time.

  • The recent rain has caused severe flooding in some areas.

  • The floods have caused millions of euros of damage.

  • Heavy rain can cause floodsor flooding.

  • 'Flooding' is a gerund, but it's often used as a plain noun.

  • In the sentences you saw, you could say 'floods' or 'flooding'.

  • The hurricane is approaching the coast.

  • It is predicted that the typhoon will make landfall in the next 24 hours.

  • The storm will bring gale force winds, with gusts of up to 80 kilometres per hour.

  • There are different words for strong winds and storms.

  • A gale is defined by the wind force on the Beaufort scale.

  • There are different definitions, but anything above a specific strength is a gale.

  • What about hurricanes and typhoons?

  • Do you know the difference?

  • Hurricanes and typhoons are both powerful tropical storms, but they start in different

  • places.

  • Hurricanes form in the Atlantic Ocean, while typhoons form in the Pacific.

  • That's all.

  • Thanks for watching!

Hi, I'm Gina.

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