Subtitles section Play video
-
Hi, Bob the Canadian here.
-
Welcome to this little English lesson about snow, ha ha!
-
We are in the middle of a little snowstorm here
-
in Ontario, Canada,
-
and I thought this would be a great time
-
to do a little English lesson for you about snow.
-
(bright music)
-
Well, hey, welcome to this little English lesson about snow.
-
We're getting lots of it right now.
-
I'm Bob the Canadian.
-
If you are new here,
-
don't forget to click that red subscribe button below
-
and give me a thumbs up at some point during this video
-
if it's helping you learn English.
-
Well, we certainly have seen a little bit more snow
-
than we normally do at this time of year,
-
so I thought this is a great time
-
to do a little English lesson on snow.
-
We are not quite in the dead of winter.
-
That's the English phrase that means the middle of winter.
-
In fact, it's still fall here,
-
but we have just a little bit of a snowstorm.
-
It's kind of fun.
-
We're getting a lot of snow coming down,
-
and you can see in the background,
-
one of the ways we would describe this
-
is to say that there is a nice blanket of snow.
-
You can see the snow
-
is kind of like a white blanket on the ground.
-
So you might recognize this as the picnic table
-
that I used to do livestreams from,
-
and I wanted to use this
-
to demonstrate what we mean by accumulation.
-
We use the word accumulation
-
to talk about how much snow has fallen.
-
So if I take this ruler and I put it into the snow,
-
we already have four centimetres of snow.
-
That's actually not a lot.
-
We're expecting another 20
-
to 25 centimetres of snow tonight.
-
So right now, the total accumulation,
-
the total amount of snow, is four centimetres.
-
This is my daughter's jack-o'-lantern from Halloween.
-
It needs to go in the compost soon,
-
so if you're wondering what that is,
-
that's a pumpkin that we carved
-
and we put a little candle inside for Halloween.
-
So you'll notice I have my winter hat,
-
which we also call a toque, and I have my gloves on
-
because even though it's only -2 Celsius right now,
-
with the wind chill factor,
-
it feels like -7.
-
The wind chill factor
-
is kind of what the wind makes it feel like
-
when it's blowing in cold weather.
-
So even though it's only -2,
-
it feels like it's -7 out here.
-
It's actually not that cold yet for a Canadian.
-
I'm like, bring on the minus 20.
-
That's when I feel like it's really cold.
-
So if you live in a northern country where you have snow,
-
and you like to drive a vehicle, you will have a snow brush,
-
which will have a scraper at the end.
-
The snow brush is for brushing snow off of your vehicle,
-
and the scraper
-
is for scraping ice. (ice scratching)
-
You can hear the sound.
-
The scraper is for scraping ice off the vehicle as well.
-
So usually, we try to park our van inside,
-
but we actually have too much stuff in our garage right now.
-
So tomorrow morning,
-
I will have to brush the snow off of my van
-
so that I can go to work.
-
Oh, I need to turn around quick.
-
That is a snowplow going by.
-
I was hoping to be closer to the road.
-
The snowplow is cleaning the snow off the road,
-
and he is also putting down salt and sand
-
so that when we drive on the road,
-
we don't have to drive through snow.
-
And the salt melts the snow,
-
and the sand gives us more traction.
-
So that was a snowplow.
-
So you can maybe just see
-
that there a lot of snowflakes falling right now.
-
One of the things that I used to do as a kid
-
is you try to catch snowflakes on your tongue.
-
It's kind of fun when you look up
-
and you see all the snowflakes coming down
-
and you try to catch them.
-
So snowflakes are the small little flakes of snow
-
that fall out of the sky,
-
and there's certainly a lot of them falling right now.
-
So another thing we do in the winter
-
is we put snow tires on our vehicles.
-
This vehicle will be going in next week, actually,
-
to have its snow tires put on.
-
These are still the normal tires.
-
So right now, it's not very safe
-
for me to drive this vehicle in the snow.
-
So I think next Tuesday, this van is going to the garage,
-
and the mechanic will change the tires
-
and put snow tires on for me.
-
That'll make it drive a lot better in a snowstorm like this.
-
Probably shoulda done it last week.
-
So often when the weather gets bad,
-
they'll talk about the driving conditions,
-
and there's two parts to the driving conditions.
-
There's the road condition.
-
That's how much ice and slush and snow there is on the road,
-
and then there's the visibility.
-
Visibility is how far you can see through the snow.
-
So you'll notice right now
-
that we have really bad road conditions,
-
and we have pretty bad visibility as well.
-
It's hard to see really far in the distance
-
when you're driving.
-
One of the things that usually happens
-
when we have a snowstorm like this
-
is school gets canceled.
-
My kids are really hoping
-
that tomorrow will be a snow day.
-
A snow day in Canada
-
is a day when they decide to keep the schools closed
-
because it's dangerous to be out driving,
-
so they just decide it's better for the children
-
to stay home.
-
So my kids right now
-
are really hoping that tomorrow will be a snow day.
-
I'm kinda hoping it is too, actually,
-
'cause then I get to stay home from work. (laughs)
-
So one of my favorite things to do as a kid
-
when there was a snowstorm
-
was to go outside and make snowballs.
-
If you pack the snow, you can make a snowball out of it,
-
and then when we were kids, we would have snowball fights.
-
So you would throw snowballs at each other
-
on the playground or at the park,
-
and it was super, super fun.
-
So one of the things
-
that my kids and I love to do in the winter
-
is go sledding.
-
There's actually another video.
-
I'll put a link up here from last winter
-
where I went sledding with my kids,
-
and that is just a fun thing to do outside in the winter.
-
Another thing that people like to do in the winter
-
is to go snowmobiling,
-
but you would think with the size property I have,
-
I would have a snowmobile, but I don't.
-
So hopefully a lot of other people with snowmobiles go out
-
and really enjoy the day tomorrow
-
with this much snow, this early in the season.
-
So the last thing I'm going to do before I go inside
-
is to make a snow angel.
-
I'm not sure if you've ever seen one,
-
but kids in Canada often make snow angels,
-
and this is how you make them.
-
You lay on the ground, and you do this!
-
And when you get back up,
-
there's kinda the shape of an angel on the ground.
-
Can you see it?
-
Well, hey, that was a little lesson on snow,
-
and it was really fun to make this during the snowstorm.
-
I'm Bob the Canadian.
-
Thank you so much for watching this English lesson.
-
If it helped you a little bit, please give me a thumbs up,
-
and if you're new here,
-
don't forget to click that red subscribe button below.
-
And thanks so much for watching.
-
(bright music)