Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk a little bit about the weather.
And that is because here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is summertime.
And where I live in Southern California, that means it is really, really hot.
On today's episode, I want to talk about how to discuss hot weather, what terms we use, what idioms and what phrases you might hear when people are talking about summertime.
So if you're interested in learning about how to talk about summer, well, of course, practice in your listening comprehension, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we get started, I want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
There you will find a list of the words and phrases that that I used in the episode so you can take them, study them, and build your English vocabulary.
Let's talk about summertime.
Here in my part of Southern California, I can say that it is so hot.
Summer weather usually starts in June and it lasts until about October.
Right now, it is about 40 degrees Celsius or a little over 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day.
There There is this part of July and August where it will just get so uncomfortable and so hot every single day.
And personally, I do not like it.
I hate the heat. I hate this intense sunshine.
But on today's episode, I really want to discuss how we talk about summer and how we talk about this really hot weather.
the first thing is that when you are talking about summertime and when you're talking about heat especially if you're watching the news if you're watching a weather report they will talk about a heat wave so a heat wave is when the temperature goes up and it lasts for a couple of days in our case here it usually lasts for a week or two where you have this really intense intense heat and it's really uncomfortable because it is so hot.
So that is called a heat wave. Once the heat wave breaks, which means that the heat wave goes away and you don't have it anymore, then the temperature goes back down.
During this time, you might also hear the phrase a heat dome, which is when you have these weather conditions where that hot air just kind of sits over a certain part of the land.
So we call that a heat dome.
And that's what helps contribute to that heat wave. On the news, they also call it a high pressure system.
Depending on whether you have low or high atmospheric pressure, it can change the weather.
Usually low pressure systems are more cooling and high pressure systems cause warmer weather.
When you talk about the hot weather, of course, you can say that it's hot.
That's a word that everyone uses how hot it is outside.
But maybe you want to elevate your vocabulary a little bit.
Maybe you want to sound a little bit more sophisticated.
Maybe you want to use different words.
And so I'm going to give you some terms that people use to describe that hot weather.
The first one is sweltering.
sweltering sweltering is a very powerful word when it comes to talking about heat and it means that the heat feels very oppressive so oppressive means that you don't want to do anything you just kind of want to lie down and try to cool off just try to feel less hot and when it's sweltering outside you are just sweating and if you even just walk a few feet or a few meters you just feel like you can't move.
It's just so uncomfortable.
This usually also brings a connotation of being a little bit sticky.
So maybe you're sweating a lot, or maybe the air around you has a lot of water in it.
So you feel a little bit sticky.
So when you have very, very high temperatures and this water element to it, the stickiness to it, that is sweltering.
When we we talk about the United States, especially in the southern part of the United States, you get this type of sweltering weather because those places are closer to the coast. They're a little bit more tropical.
And so they have this really sweltering aspect to their heat waves.
You might also hear the term muggy.
If something is muggy, that's another way of saying that you have this humidity in the air, that you have a lot of water in the air.
So when we're talking about the these southern states like florida louisiana for example when they have very hot weather when they have this really high humidity there's a lot of water in the air and that gets you that muggy feeling so maybe you take a shower and then when you come out of the shower you dry off and then you start sweating because of how hot it is and there's all this moisture in the air and it feels like you didn't even dry off it feels like you still have all of this water on your body that That would be a muggy type of weather, being in a muggy environment.
An idiom that goes along with this muggy feeling and this humidity, people might say that it's like a sauna.
A sauna is a room that you go into where you just sit there and basically sweat.
It's a very, very hot room and they usually also have a lot of moisture in them, a little bit steamy because of the moisture and the heat.
people will say that when it is very hot outside and very muggy that it is like going into a sauna because even though it's outside it has the same sauna -like conditions when you're comparing muggy and sweltering sweltering definitely has more of a heat feel to it so think of more hot when muggy means hot but not as intense as sweltering and maybe even more wet more more humidity if it's hot but really the main complaint is how humid it is you might want to use the word muggy say it's muggy outside if the main complaint is the heat there is some humidity but the heat is really really what's annoying
you, then you can say that it's sweltering outside.
Where I live, I live in the desert area of Southern California.
And thankfully, during the summer times, it's not usually muggy.
It's not usually sweltering.
Our humidity level is very low.
I actually have a humidifier in my house to try to add humidity to the air because usually my humidity inside my my house is around 14%, sometimes even 12%.
It's very low. Because it is hot here, but we don't have that high humidity, we say that we have a dry heat.
A dry heat, that word dry means that you don't have a lot of water, but it's still hot.
So we say it's a dry heat because we don't have a lot of humidity or moisture in the air, but we definitely have the heat aspect.
Sometimes when when people are talking about a dry heat, they will say that it's like opening an oven.
An oven is where you bake food or maybe cook some of your food.
And if you think about it, if you open your oven door, usually you feel that hot air that's coming out of your oven.
And that's what they're referring to here.
Someone says it's like opening an oven.
What they mean is when you go outside, you just get hit in the face with this really hot, dry air.
Another word that you might hear to describe how hot it is, is scorching.
Now to be scorched is to be burnt, usually by having some type of open fire, like a blowtorch, get something very, very hot and kind of burn the outside of it.
When we're saying it's scorching outside, what we mean is that it's so hot, it feels like your skin is burning.
If you've ever been in a very hot environment where your skin is exposed to the sun, then you can have that type of feeling like your skin is really being burnt by the sun. Now, it doesn't actually mean that your skin is actually burning, but it just means that it feels that way.
It's just so hot, it's uncomfortable for your skin.
You don't want to stand in the direct sunlight.
In that case, you can use the word scorching.
You can say it is scorching outside, side or you can say the sun is scorching right now.
You also might hear the word sizzling.
Sizzling is usually referring to a type of meat when you pull it out of the oven or when it's getting done cooking, how it's still very hot and kind of makes a little crackling sound.
When we're talking about the sun, again, not really literal sense.
You're not actually cooking anything and you don't have that crackling experience, but we're just saying that it feels like that.
It feels like everything everything is so hot like we're being cooked almost because it is so hot outside.
This is another good word when you feel like the sun is really intense.
When the heat is really intense, you can say that it is sizzling.
When the sunlight is scorching the earth, when it is sizzling outside, there's another idiom that people tend to use and that is that you can fry an egg on the sidewalk or fry an egg on the cement.
Usually the sidewalks, the areas where people walk are made out of cement, while the roads that people drive on are usually made out of asphalt, which is a different color.
It's that black color versus the gray of the cement.
This doesn't really mean that you are cooking anything, that you're actually cooking an egg outside, but what it means is that the sunlight is so intense and there's so much energy going into the roads and the sidewalks that if you took an egg and you put it on the sidewalk, it would cook because it is so hot outside.
When it is that hot outside, you want to put sunscreen onto your skin to protect it from the sun. You do not want to damage your skin, so you will want to put sunscreen on.
You will see SPF on all of these sunscreen products that are are sold and that stands for sun protection factor.
It is a number to say how much that particular product protects you from the sun. Ideally, a higher number is better, but there is some evidence that over 50 doesn't really protect you any more than 50 would.
So if you have SBF 50 and SBF 80, they would protect the same amount.
People should definitely protect their skin from the sun because when they don't that is called a sunburn so a sunburn is when your skin starts turning red when it gets really hot really irritated because of the sun exposure if it's really bad you can even get blisters which is when your skin starts to get these little pockets of fluid in it and then over time that sunburn starts to peel the top layer of the skin comes off and And that's very damaging.
You do not want to have multiple sunburns over your lifetime because that increases your risk of skin cancer.
So you want to protect your skin and use sunscreen.
However, I can say that there are people who do want to use the sun to change their skin color.
They don't want to be burnt.
They don't want to turn red.
But maybe they want their skin to turn a little little bit darker.
That is called a sun tan.
There are some products that are sun tan lotions that are supposed to help you absorb that sunlight and change your skin color.
Not very recommended for health reasons.
And then there's also things that are called fake tanning products.
These are lotions that you can put on that give you that darker skin color, but don't actually require require the sun don't cause your skin to be damaged by the sun when you do have that sun tanning effect when you do have a slightly darker skin color maybe even a little bit of pink in your face because of the sun exposure we call that sun kissed so sun kissed think of it like the sun's just just kissing you just give me a little bit a little bit of radiation and sun damage right right?
Just a tiny little bit to give a little bit of color to you, especially your face.
If you look at makeup products, sometimes they'll even say you have a glow or a sun -kissed look if you use this particular type of makeup.
And that's what it is referring to, giving you a little bit of pink, maybe a little bit of a darker skin tone, just to seem like maybe you're in the sun for a few hours without really getting any type of that burned look to it.
So we've talked about how the sun can impact your skin, but there's also something that is more dangerous, at least in the short term, and that is something called sun stroke or heat stroke.
This is a serious medical condition when your body overheats.
So to overheat means it gets too hot, your temperature of your body goes too high, and you aren't able to bring that temperature down.
Usually the signs of this is when you are not able to sweat.
So your body is really, really hot, but your skin is dry because you are not sweating.
Sweating is a way that we have naturally to bring our body temperature down.
But if you can't sweat, that means your body temperature is going to stay up.
Some other signs of it is when you have nausea, vomiting, you might have a headache or feel dizzy.
and this can all occur if you've been exposed to too much sunshine and you've been in these hot temperatures for too long.
Having too much of that is dangerous.
You really need to make sure you bring your body temperature down, drink a lot of cool liquids, and seek medical attention if it is severe because that's dangerous.
It's a very dangerous condition and something to worry about if you are going to spend a lot of time outside and in the sun. When it is that hot outside, you do want to stay cool.
You do want to stay comfortable and bring your body temperature down.
So you will hear things like cool off or stay cool.
People will say that they need to go into the pool to cool off.
What that means is that they're going to the pool to bring their body temperature down to feel cooler.
You'll also hear that people want to go inside air conditioned buildings to cool off or on the news, they might ask people on the street, how do you stay cool cool during the summer.
Live in Pasadena, cooling off Rick, your assignment, great this morning.
When you see advertisements for drinks in particular, you will see the phrase is ice cold.
So it'll say ice cold drinks, for example, especially during the summertime, if you're going to drink some type of soda like a Coca -Cola or Sprite or something, then you will get ice in your drink if you go to a restaurant.
And it's just supposed to help you cool down, stay cool, during the summer.
You might also see advertisements for drinks that say thirst quenching when it's very hot outside, you want to drink, you have a lot of thirst. The advertisements will say thirst quenching, which means it relieves your thirst. You drink that and you're no longer thirsty.
Now one last idiom about summer.
You will hear that it is the dog days of summer.
And it's a a little bit up in the air about where that term comes from.
So up in the air means it's debated.
It's not 100 % sure.
I saw some theories that it has to do with a star constellation, which is a dog, which means that when you see that constellation in the summertime, it's referring to that particular constellation as the dog of summer.
There's also some theories that it comes from dogs, the animal dogs, when it's really hot outside, how they pant and they just kind of lie eye on the ground trying to stay cool when you hear that term dog days of summer it just means it's like the middle of summer where it's really really hot and you don't want to move or do anything so if someone says oh it's the dog days of summer right now it means that it's just really hot and it's that time of the year where you don't want to put any effort in you don't want to do anything because it's so uncomfortable and it's so hot i hope you enjoyed this episode
i hope you found it interesting and learned a little bit about the terms that we use to describe summer and the heat that comes with it.
If you want me to do another episode like this in the future, if you want me to do more vocabulary themed episodes, please let me know because there's a lot of topics we can talk about.
So if you're interested in that, please leave a comment.
You can also look at the description of this episode for the vocabulary list. You will find the words and phrases that I used.
So if any of them were new, if you want to review and study them, please refer to that list so you can continue to build your English vocabulary.
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