TALKING ABOUT WEATHER FOR PRE-INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

A.         Weather Conditions

Look at this list of common weather words. Notice that it is very common to form adjectives by adding ‘-y’

Noun                           adjectives                            noun                                     adjectives

Sun                              sunny                                    wind                                      windy

Cloud                          cloudy                                   ice                                          ic(e)y

Fog                               foggy                                     shower                                 showery

Heat                            hot                                         humidity                              humid

Note: When it rains for a short period of time, we call it a shower, e.g. we had several showers yesterday afternoon.

When it is raining a lot we often say it’s pouring or it’s pouring with rain. This phrase is much more common than ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’, which many students seem to learn

B.         Temperature

people round the world have different ideas about temperature:

5⁰ C (five degrees centigrade) is freezing for many Brazilians.

-10⁰ (minus ten degrees or ten degrees below zero) is very cold but quite normal in the mountains in Switzerland during the winter when it usually snows a lot. 30-35⁰ C is boiling for England, but it is very common in parts of Spain during the summer.

C.         Wind

The first word here is very gentle; the last is more than 100 km per hour and can be very dangerous.

A breeze                    a wind                  a strong wind                    a gale                    a hurricane

It was a hot day but there was a lovely breeze.

The wind blew my hat off.

The hurricane in Florida destroyed trees and buildings.

D.         Thunderstorms

A spell (=period) of very hot weather often ends with a thunderstorm. First it becomes very humid (=hot and wet, then you get thunder and lightning, and finally, very heavy rain (=it pours with rain). Afterwards, it is usually cooler and it feels fresher.

Exercises.

Identify the weather conditions in these pictures

True or false? If a sentence is false, write a true sentence about the weather conditions in the sentence.

1.       It often pours with rain in the desert

2.       It gets quite chilly in the desert in the evening

3.       Thunder makes a noise

4.       Lightning can kill people

5.       A shower is a gentle breeze

6.       A spell of hot weather may end in a thunderstorm

7.       If it is humid, the air will be very dry

8.       Below zero, water turns to ice

9.       Heavy rain means that it is pouring with rain

10.   When it’s foggy you need sunglasses

ANSWER KEY

1.          FOGGY

2.          SNOWING

3.          CLOUDY

4.          POURING WITH RAIN

5.          IC(E)Y

6.          SUNNY

1.             FALSE

2.             TRUE

3.             TRUE

4.             TRUE

5.             FALSE

6.             TRUE

7.             FALSE

8.             TRUE

9.             TRUE

10.         FALSE