In this post you will learn many English expressions and vocabulary that you can use to talk about the weather.

In general, if you want to ask someone about the weather you can say:

• How’s the weather today?
• What’s the weather like?

Learn the English Weather Adjectives:

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If you want to talk about how hot or cold the temperature is you can simply ask,

• What’s the temperature there?
• What’s the temp there?

Notice we shorten the word temperature to temp in casual real life English conversation.

To find out the weather in a specific location, you can even say:

• How hot is it in {country/city}?
• How cold is it there?

Keep in mind that if you are talking to someone from the U.S., we use degrees Fahrenheit, whereas the rest of the world uses degrees Celsius. I know it’s strange. We don’t even say Fahrenheit though, when we’re talking about it, it’s just assumed that it’s Fahrenheit. We would say:

• It’s 50 degrees
• It’s 50 degrees out
• It’s 50 degrees outside

You can tell if someone is using Fahrenheit, because something like 50 degrees in Celsius would be VERY HOT. Here is the °F to °C conversion for the math nerds:

°F = (°C×9/5) + 32

We’re gonna go into some common weather expressions and words by seasons. There’s four seasons:

• spring
• summer
• fall/autumn
• winter

I’m going to give you some common English weather vocabulary and phrases for each season.

• It’s the perfect day outside today – usually meaning it’s beautiful, it’s sunny, it’s not too hot, not too cold,
• There’s not a cloud in the sky. – You can say that when the sky is just completely blue, and beautiful.
• In the summer you’ll also hear people say, it’s hot, it’s sunny, it’s breezy, it’s scorching, which means it’s really hot,
• It’s humid out – meaning that there’s this little moisture in the air.

I actually checked today the weather forecast, and there’s an 81% humidity right now, which is high, it feels muggy, which means unpleasantly warm and the air feels thick. It also feels harder to breath in higher humidity.

• It’s misting, or it’s drizzling, which is a light rain.
• It’s storming, it’s thundering, you know the loud noise from the sky.

My mom would say God is bowling in heaven during loud thunderstorms, because it would sound like a strike that you get in bowling, when all the pins go crashing down.

• It’s lightning or there’s lightning, you know the flashes that you see in the sky.
• I see flashes of lightning.

Here in the Carolinas, where I live it’s common to have a summer storm every afternoon.

Some idiomatic expressions we use you may have heard:

• It’s raining cats and dogs, it doesn’t really make sense, but it means it’s raining so hard.
• I got caught in a downpour, which a downpour is also a really hard rain.

Some expressions for fall which is my favorite season:

• It’s cool out today, meaning more on the cold side, but not too cold.
• It’s a brisk day, it’s chilly out.
• It’s a clear day meaning there aren’t any clouds in the sky.

Some expressions with winter:

• It’s freezing, which means very cold
• You could say it’s frigid out, which also means very cold.
• It’s gloomy when the skies are dark and overcast.
• There’s a snowstorm or there is a blizzard, which means a lot of snow, usually you can’t even see in front of you.
• It’s a white out, which literally means it’s just white in front of you that’s all you see is this magical snow coming down like crazy.
• It’s hailing, when there’s those little balls of ice coming down from the sky, that’s called hail,
• It’s sleeting outside, which is a mixture of rain and snow.

Some weather expressions with spring.

• It’s foggy out, when you can’t see very well, there’s the clouds low to the ground,
• It’s cloudy,
• It’s windy out.
• You also may hear a tornado, it’s the strong circular wind that can cause a lot of damage,
• Hurricane, which is a storm with a very violent wind also causing destruction.
• “April showers bring May flowers,” showers are talking about rain, so rain in April brings the flowers in May.

If you want to talk about a prediction of the weather forecast you can say:

• It’s supposed to be,
• It’s supposed to be warm today,
• It’s supposed to rain today,
• It’s supposed to storm tomorrow.

If you want to talk about yesterday’s weather, you can say:

• it rained yesterday,
• it snowed yesterday
• it was cold yesterday
• it was hot yesterday

There are many idioms that are inspired by the weather! Here are a few examples:

Under the weather – Feeling sick or unwell.

Example: I’m staying home today because I’m feeling under the weather.

Every cloud has a silver lining – There’s something good in every bad situation.

Example: Losing my job was tough, but it led me to a better opportunity—every cloud has a silver lining!

Come rain or shine – No matter what happens.

Example: We’re going on that trip come rain or shine!

Throw caution to the wind – To take a risk and act recklessly.

Example: She threw caution to the wind and quit her job to travel the world.

I hope that you have much more confidence when it comes to talking about the weather in english. Thanks for reading the blog!

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