Discuss the following questions.

1. What kind of weather do you prefer?

2. What is the weather like (spring, summer, autumn and winter) in your home town? What is the average temperature?

3. Are there four seasons (spring, summer, autumn and winter) in your country? Do you know countries where there are only two seasons (rainy and dry)?

4. Would you agree to live without one of the seasons? Why?

5. Do you feel better when it is cold or hot?

6. Which season to your mind has more advantages than disadvantages?

7. Which is the best season for a holiday?

8. What kind of weather do most people like / dislike? Why?

9. What are your favourite summer / spring / winter / autumn activities?

Vocabulary work

A Cold weather

In Scandinavia, the chilly (1) days of autumn soon change to the cold days of winter. The first frosts (2) arrive and the roads become icy. Rain becomes sleet (3) and then snow, at first turning to slush (4) in the streets, but soon settling (5), with severe blizzards (6) and snowdrifts (7) in the far north. Freezing weather often continues in the far north until May or even June, when the ground starts to thaw (8) and the ice melts (9) again.

(1) cold, but not very (2) thin white coat of ice on everything (3) rain and snow mixed (4) dirty, brownish, half-snow, half-water (5) staying as a white covering (6) snow blown by high winds (7) deep banks of snow against walls, etc. (8) change from hard, frozen state to normal (9) change from solid to liquid under heat

B Warm/hot weather

close [warm and uncomfortable], stifling [hot, uncomfortable, you can hardly breathe], humid [hot and damp, makes you sweat a lot], scorching [very hot, often used in positive contexts], boiling [very hot, often used in negative contexts], mild [warm at a time when it is normally cold]

Note also: We had a heatwave last month, [very hot, dry period]

C Wet weather

This wet weather scale gets stronger from left to right.

Damp — drizzle — pour down / downpour —-torrential rain — flood

Autumn in London is usually chilly and damp with rain and drizzle.

It was absolutely pouring down. or There was a real downpour.

In the Tropics there is usually torrential rain most days, and the roads often get flooded. or There are floods on the roads.

This rain won't last long; it's only a shower. [short duration]
The storm damaged several houses. [high winds and rain together]
We got very wet in the thunderstorm. [thunder and heavy rain]

Hailstones were battering the roof of our car. [small balls of ice falling from the sky]. Note also hail (uncountable).

The sky's a bit overcast; I think it's going to rain. [very cloudy]

We had a drought /draut/ last summer. It didn't rain for six weeks.