Are you ready to talk about the weather?

Let's do it.

Vanessa: Have you ever felt like you use the same words

again and again?

It's a sunny day.

I think it's going to rain.

Those are great, but do you know what, there are so many more natural expressions to describe

the weather and because weather is one of the most common small talk topics, this is

a great way to master something and feel confident in it.

Every day, you can just look outside, look out the window, describe the weather in English

and you're building your vocabulary step by step.

Some English websites and textbooks use hundreds of weather expressions, but we don't really

use those in daily life, unless your job is to be the weatherman on TV.

So I have good news, today I'm going to share with you 100 real English weather expressions

that we definitely use in daily life and I hope that you can too.

Vanessa: I broke down these 100 expressions into some

different categories.

So today we're going to talk about how to describe the sun, sky, air, rain, cold, temperature,

and some common questions that you're going to hear and you can ask to talk about the

weather.

All right, let's get started by talking about the sun.

There are three common sentence structures that we use to talk about the weather.

You could say, "It's sunny, it's a sunny day or more casually, it's a sunny one today."

I'm going to be using those three pretty simple sentence structures throughout this lesson,

so I hope that you'll feel confident and comfortable using them yourself.

Let's change out that word sunny.

Sunny is just a generic term for the sun is shining, but what else could you say to be

a little bit more specific?

"It's nice and warm today.

It's March now, so at the end of winter, it's really nice to have a day that is nice and

warm."

Vanessa: Those two words usually go together or you

might say, "Oh, it's a bright one today.

The sun is really bright."

Great expression.

"Oh man, it's hot.

It's a hot one today."

All of these expressions are getting stronger and stronger.

They're getting warmer and warmer, hotter and hotter.

Or you could say, "It's boiling."

When you boil water, bubbles form in the water and that is extremely hot.

Of course, this is an exaggeration, but you're probably going to see that in a lot of these

weather expressions, they are exaggerations, "It's boiling."

Or you can say, "It's scorching.

And this kind of feels like your in an oven.

"It is scorching or it's a scorching one today."

Or you could say, "It's a scorcher."

That means it's really hot.

Sometimes when it's hot outside, the air texture is also different, so you might say, "It's

muggy, it's humid, it feels like you're swimming outside."

Vanessa: You can get the sense that the air is thick

with moisture.

It's not because it's raining, but just because it feels like a swimming pool.

You're sweating, the air is thick.

If you've experienced weather like this, you definitely know what it's like.

Here where I live, in the summer, it's pretty common to have humid weather.

The air is humid or it just feels muggy.

It's kind of miserable in my opinion, but that's pretty common when you have hot weather,

it's sometimes also muggy.

Vanessa: All right.

What we're going to do now is I have a special segment for you.

You're going to be seeing my husband, Dan and I looking at some weather pictures that

have to do with vocabulary we just talked about and Dan and I are going to briefly have

a quick conversation about those pictures describing the weather.

So you're going to hear us naturally describe them.

You might hear some of the same words, you might hear different new words, but I hope

that you'll be able to see that, yeah, we really use these in daily life.

All right, let's go.

I'm here with my husband, Dan.

Dan: Hello.

Vanessa: If you can see us small in the little corner

over here and we're going to be talking about these four pictures that have to do with the

words that you just learned or maybe you'll learn some new words.

So when you look at this first picture of the guy snowboarding, how would you describe

the weather of that picture?

Dan: Well, I'd probably say first it's a really

clear and sunny day.

Honestly, I'd probably say it's cold first, just because there's snow, but then I'd follow

it up with, it's very clear and sunny or I'd say it's a perfect day for snowboarding.

Vanessa: Oh yeah.

It looks really bright, the way the sun is reflecting, especially off the camera.

It looks like a bright day, clear, sunny.

But compared to that, what about the next picture of the boat?

Dan: The top right one?

Vanessa: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, the picture of the boat, I would say

it's misty, although I suppose it could be pretty humid.

I'm not sure.

What would you say?

Vanessa: Yeah, I would say misty, humid, muggy.

If this is in the South of the US, I imagine that it's pretty muggy, even if this is the

early morning hours.

Dan: Yeah, muggy is like when you walk outside

and you feel the water on your body, it's basically the same thing as humid.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Which might relate to the next picture in the jungle.

Dan: Yeah, in that jungle, I would definitely say

humid.

It just looks really wet in there and you could probably feel the water.

When you breathe, you feel like you're breathing in thick air.

Could even say, thick.

Thick and muggy.

Vanessa: Thick, muggy, humid.

Usually this is not ideal conditions for me, but some of you that might be the norm.

What about the last picture, which is kind of the opposite of what we just talked about?

Dan: Yeah, so the first word I would use to describe

this would just be dry, but it's because of all that broken ground there, but you could

say it's scorched, scorched earth, or scorching hot.

Vanessa: Ah, yes.

We can use the word scorched in a couple of different ways.

It's scorched earth.

It's scorching outside.

The weather's scorchy.

It's a scorcher.

Sure, we can say all of those things.

Dan: It's a scorcher, that's more slang.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Great.

Thanks for your help.

Dan: You're welcome.

Vanessa: I hope you enjoyed that special segment.

Now we're going to go onto the next category, which is describing types of sky or air.

It's clear.

It's a clear day, not a cloud in the sky.

That's a common expression that we use to talk about a clear day, not a cloud in the

sky.

You could add there's, at the beginning, there's not a cloud in the sky, but if you just want

it to be more casual, cut it off and say, "Whoa, not a cloud in the sky today."

Perfectly fine.

But what if there are some clouds?

You could simply say, "It's cloudy or it's partially cloudy."

That means that there's some clouds, but it's not completely cloudy.

It's cloudy, it's partially cloudy, or it's overcast.

This kind of has a dark feeling to this word, it's overcast.

That means that you can't see any sky at all.

Vanessa: In fact, today, it is completely overcast.

There is no sun.

It's overcast.

It's kind of darker than it would normally be because you can't see the sun through the

clouds.

Or you might say, "It looks threatening."

Threatening.

What is threatening you here?

Are the clouds coming down and saying, "Vanessa, you better behave."

No.

In this situation, it looks like rain is most definitely going to happen, or some kind of

storm is coming.

You can imagine dark clouds, maybe they're moving quickly.

Maybe the shape of the clouds makes you think, ah, there's probably going to be a big storm.

So if you're hiking and you look up and you see threatening clouds, you can use this expression,

"It looks threatening.

I think we should turn back."

Threatening.

Vanessa: In the spring especially, it's pretty common

for it to be windy.

It's a windy day or, oh, it's pretty breezy.

I need to tie my hair back, it's breezy.

What about the word blustery?

Now this is a little bit more formal and I feel like you're more likely to hear this

on a TV weather program, it's a blustery day today.

But you might hear some people use this in daily life.

It's a blustery one today, just kind of in a casual way to say, "Oh, it's really windy.

The wind is blowing pretty strongly.

It's not a hurricane or anything, but it's still a blustery day.

It's a breezy day or it's simply windy."

Now it's time to go onto the special section with my husband, Dan, where we're going to

be describing some pictures of the sky or of the wind.

Let's go.

Here we have four new pictures talking about the sky or the air.

Dan: Lots of mountains in these pictures.

Vanessa: Yeah.

When I was looking at pictures- Dan:

I want to go to these places, it looks really pretty.

Vanessa: A lot of them had mountains or the ocean.

I guess that's kind of the most picturesque places to take pictures.

But what would you say about this top left picture?

The one that has some houses in it.

Dan: There's some a wispy clouds in this photograph.

But just in general, I'd say it's partly cloudy.

That's what I would say.

Vanessa: It's not completely clear.

It's just partly cloudy.

I think that's exact expression I would use as well.

Dan: That's what the weatherman would say.

Vanessa: Yeah and us.

What about the next one with these rugged mountains?

This is actually in Hawaii.

Super cool.

Dan: I would just keep it simple again and just

say cloudy, it's a cloudy day.

Vanessa: I would say it's overcast because there's

no sun.

It's kind of dreary and dark.

And when you have an overcast day, you can't see any sun.

But in that first picture you can see some sun, you can see the blue sky through the

clouds, but when it's overcast it's just completely covered in clouds, like that picture.

Dan: Yeah.

And if you get a few days of that in a row, some people might say it's just miserable

outside and they're probably talking about a sky that's gray.

Vanessa: Yeah, a gray sky.

Dan: So it's a gray sky.

Vanessa: What about the next one?

Where the clouds are a little bit darker?

Dan: Yeah, I would again probably say cloudy first,

but I could say it looks potentially stormy, like it might rain soon.

Vanessa: I would use the word threatening because if

I was hiking and I saw the clouds roll in like this, I would probably say, "Oh, I should

find some shelter or we should find our way back to our car."

Dan: Do you think you'd say the clouds look threatening

or would you just say it looks threatening out there?

Vanessa: Oh, I think you could say either, the clouds

looked threatening or just it looks threatening, simply it.

The weather.

The sky looks threatening.

What about the last one though?

Beautiful day.

Dan: Well, again, it's a partly cloudy day, but

it looks quite windy.

It looks very windy or breezy.

I'm not in the photograph, so I don't know how strong the wind is blowing, but usually

when you're standing near a body of water, the wind is coming in your face.

Kind of refreshing.

Vanessa: It's a little bit breezy, a little bit windy.

I probably wouldn't say that this is blustery.

Dan: Could be though.

Vanessa: I feel like blustery is a little bit more