It’s commonly held that talking about the weather is what you do in really dull conversations, when you can’t think of anything else to say but feel like you have to keep the conversation going. Whether you’re in an elevator with your new CEO, waiting for a mutual friend with someone you’ve never met before, or trying to make out-of-town clients comfortable until your manager is ready to meet with them, it’s always easy to comment on the weather outside – and everyone has an opinion on the weather.

In fact, talking about the weather is a good way to practice your English conversation. Here are three ways you can use the weather to improve your speaking skills:

• practice using idioms, metaphors, and similes
• increase your vocabulary with weather-specific terminology
• expand your use of descriptive words

Idioms, Metaphors, and Similes

In the last post, we talked about common English idioms, and explained that the words in such an expression aren’t to be taken literally. So when you hear the idiom “it’s raining cats and dogs” don’t rush outside looking for a shower of Schnauzers or puddles of Persians – this phrase just means that it’s raining very heavily.

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which one thing is described as if it is equivalent to another, but like an idiom, it’s not a literal expression. When you say “the snow is a white blanket covering the street” you don’t really mean that a huge blanket has been knitted together out of snowflakes and spread out over the pavement.

Similes describe things by comparing them to something else using the words like or as. You might say “the sun was shining like a spotlight on my face” or “the wind is blowing as noisily as an airplane engine.”

Terminology

If you’ve been following the news about global climate change, you might have heard that carbon sequestration is being proposed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by trapping it and storing it under the ocean. The word sequester comes from the Latin sequestrare, meaning “to place in safekeeping.” Trees naturally sequester carbon dioxide, and emit oxygen. This oxygen emission (release, flow, discharge) is what allows people and all the other animals to breathe and live.

There are many terms specific to meteorology (the study of weather processes and weather forecasting), including names for specific types of clouds. A cumulus cloud is a low-hanging cloud with a flat base and a rounded, heaped-up surface. In Latin, cumulus means “heap.”

Descriptive Words

Don’t just say that it’s raining – say that it’s pouring down in sheets. If the sun is shining, say that it’s shining brightly. When the wind is blowing, describe it as blowing wildly, or gusting, or howling. Use a conversation about weather as an opportunity to get creative with language.

Keep practicing, and when you’re talking about weather, people will find it a fascinating topic!