☔💦 How many words do you know for rain? | Weather words — Transcript

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1. 0:00Precipitation.
2. 0:01Rainfall. Showers. Showery rain.
3. 0:03Spitting. Chucking it down, bucketing it down.
4. 0:06Torrential rain. Pouring down.
5. 0:09Mizzle. Drizzle.
6. 0:09And you're soaked!
7. 0:10And you get soaking.
8. 0:12Rain. How do we talk about it?
9. 0:14I asked meteorologist and BBC weather presenter, Simon King
10. 0:19what words we can use to talk about rain.
11. 0:21There are so many different words for rain in English.
12. 0:25We do use a lot of different words for rain.
13. 0:28So, overall, we use the word 'precipitation',
14. 0:32and that basically means anything that comes out of the clouds, the sky.
15. 0:37So that includes rainfall, but sleet, snow or hail.
16. 0:44So, that all encompasses precipitation.
17. 0:47OK. And there are lots of words, when I watch the weather forecast,
18. 0:52or listen to the weather forecast,
19. 0:54loads of different words for rain like 'shower',
20. 0:58you use shower a lot, which is a bit confusing because this is a shower.
21. 1:03So, what's going on?
22. 1:05So, that's quite, it's quite meteorological,
23. 1:09the difference between rain and showers,
24. 1:11but the most simple way to describe it is
25. 1:15a shower is something,
26. 1:16well, it's rain, which may not last all that long,
27. 1:19so it may just last an hour or so.
28. 1:22Or we might say showery rain, which means that rain is on
29. 1:26and off throughout the day, whereas rain is when it just rains a lot,
30. 1:31- OK - for a long period of time.
31. 1:33Yeah. And there's also a lot of informal rain words in English.
32. 1:37So, an example of that is 'spitting'.
33. 1:41Yes, 'spitting' - that's light rain.
34. 1:44Spitting rain, isn't it? I don't know.
35. 1:46Bits and pieces of rain, I guess.
36. 1:48A small amount?
37. 1:49A splatter of rain, yeah.
38. 1:51Yeah. And then we have 'chucking it down' or 'bucketing it down'.
39. 1:55Imagine a bucket of water,
40. 1:57literally, that's really rainy.
41. 2:00But I guess you wouldn't say that on the weather forecast.
42. 2:03We might say 'torrential rain'.
43. 2:05OK.
44. 2:06Very occasionally, I might say
45. 2:08it's pouring down outside.
46. 2:10And that's when we have some really big, heavy, rain showers.
47. 2:13And we can sometimes use those words
48. 2:15because it's important to describe the weather as well.
49. 2:20OK, OK.
50. 2:21But the other one, 'mizzle', is a good one.
51. 2:24What is mizzle?
52. 2:25So, drizzle is that very fine rain.
53. 2:28And it's comprised of very, very small rain droplets.
54. 2:32OK.
55. 2:32Now, mizzle is a combination of mist and drizzle.
56. 2:37And it's when it's really misty,
57. 2:40but you just feel a little bit of rain on your skin.
58. 2:44It gets you soaking wet.
59. 2:46Yeah. Sometimes you look outside and it's like "It's not raining!"
60. 2:49And then you go outside.
61. 2:50And you're soaked!
62. 2:51And you get soaking. Yeah, definitely.
63. 2:53Well thank you, Simon, that was all very interesting.
64. 2:56And you have given us some words that we will hear in the weather forecast.
65. 3:01'Precipitation'.
66. 3:02You talked about 'torrential rain', which is when it's raining really heavily.
67. 3:07But we also talked about some informal words.
68. 3:09Yeah. We have the other informal words that you might hear,
69. 3:13like: 'pouring it down', 'spitting', 'bucketing it down'.
70. 3:18And raining cats and dogs.
71. 3:19Yes.
72. 3:20Which no one actually says.