Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 887, A Destructive Storm.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 887.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
Become a member of ESL Podcast and download the Learning Guide for this episode.
This episode is a dialogue between Alan and Monica about a dangerous storm when you have very bad weather.
Let's get started.
Are you all right?
Yes, we're fine, but that blizzard really caught us off guard, especially this time of year.
Have you seen the news?
I just watched it.
Overnight, the storm felled over 30 trees in and around the town and toppled utility lines.
City officials are saying that some residents may not get their electricity restored until the weekend.
That's terrible, especially with these unseasonably cold temperatures.
I heard the ferocious storm last night, but I didn't expect that homes would actually be in danger of washing away.
I don't know if any will actually be washed away unless we continue to get steady rain and snow, but those downed trees wrecked plenty of homes.
It'll take months for us to fully recover from this storm.
They're calling it the storm of the century.
Well, if we just get one of these storms this century, then that's more than enough.
Alan says to Monica, Are you all right?
Are you okay?
Monica says yes, we're fine, but that blizzard really caught us off guard, especially this time of year.
Apparently, Alan is talking to Monica on the telephone.
Monica says, we're fine, we're okay, but that blizzard really caught us off guard.
A blizzard?
B-L-I-Z-Z-A-R-D is a very strong storm with a lot of cold air and fast moving wind and, most importantly, a lot of snow.
Monica said... ...to catch...
Someone off guard.
Caught is the past tense.
Of catch means for something to happen when a person is not expecting it and is completely unprepared for it.
I was caught off guard when my girlfriend told me that she was leaving me for another man.
I was caught off guard.
I was completely surprised.
And isn't that the way it typically is?
Right guys?
Well, Monica was caught off guard by this blizzard.
She asks Alan if he's seen the news, the newspapers or the news reports on television.
Alan says, I just watched it.
I just watched it on television.
Overnight, through the night or during the night, the storm felled over 30 trees in and around town and toppled utility lines.
To fell, F-E-L-L, means to make a tree fall down, usually by cutting the tree down.
But if you have very strong winds, you could also have trees that fall down from the wind.
Allen says the storm also toppled utility lines.
To topple, T-O-P-P-L-E, means to knock something over, to knock something down.
A utility line is also called a power line.
These are long cables, long wires that carry electricity and internet and telephone lines, signals and other electronic information from your house or your building to some other place.
So if you have electricity in your home or in your office, there must be some sort of line that connects the power from the city or the local power plant to your house.
We would call that a utility line.
The utility lines, at least traditionally in the United States, were always put up on very tall poles.
Now, in many places, they bury the utility lines in the ground.
But traditionally and still in most places.
In my neighborhood, for example, the utility lines are up on tall poles.
That's the case in our story as well.
Allen says, I'm a resident of Los Angeles.
I'm a resident of California.
In the United States...
The place where you are a resident, where you live permanently, is the place where you can vote, where you get your driver's license, where you pay your taxes and so forth.
City officials, according to Allen, are saying that some residents may not get their electricity restored until the weekend.
To restore...
R-E-S-T-O-R-E means to bring something back that perhaps has gone away or was damaged.
We're going to restore this old building.
It's falling apart.
It's not the way it used to be.
We're going to make it the way it used to be.
We're going to bring it back to the condition that it used to be in.
That's to restore.
To restore someone's electricity would mean to give them back electricity that has been taken from them or that has not been delivered to them, in this case because of the toppled utility lines.
Monica says that's terrible, especially with these unseasonably cold temperatures.
Something that is unseasonably is something that doesn't normally happen during this time of year.
We're referring specifically to the weather.
We describe weather as unseasonable if, for example, it's in the middle of the summertime and it's very cold, or if it's in the middle of the winter and it's very hot.
That would be unseasonable weather, weather that doesn't normally happen during that time of year, that season.
There are, of course, four seasons, summer, fall, winter, spring.
Let me see.
Summer, fall, winter, spring.
Monica says, I heard the ferocious storm last night.
Ferocious.
F-E-R-O-C-I-O-U-S is an adjective typically used to describe someone who's very angry and perhaps very dangerous with a lot of energy.
Here it describes a very strong storm, a storm that is causing a lot of damage.
Monica says that she didn't expect that Holmes would actually be in danger of washing away.
Hmm.
Okay.
This is quite a storm.
It probably is a storm that has affected different parts of the country and so has different manifestations, different ways of showing itself, if you will.
Monica describes the storm first as a blizzard, but then we also hear that utility lines were toppled, which could happen in a blizzard with strong winds.
Now, however, she's talking about homes being washed away.
To wash away means to be washed.
Removed from where they are by a strong force of water.
A river, for example, if it gets too much water in, it could wash away the houses on either side of it.
The force of the water could push the houses into the river.
That would be to wash away.
Usually the term wash away is used when talking about a flood, F-L-O-O-D.
A flood is when you have too much water in a river.
In the case that I just described, that would be a flood.
Here Monica is talking about houses being washed away, but of course that wouldn't be possible if it was a blizzard, unless she's talking about the storm that first went through the southern part of the United States and then the northern part, or first the northern part and then the southern part.
That's possible.
You could have rain in one area of the country and snow where it's colder in another area of the country.
And that does sometimes happen.
Alan says I don't know if any will actually be washed away any homes that is, unless we continue to get steady rain and snow.
Steady, S-T-E-A-D-Y, means consistent or constant, without any interruption, without a pause.
Something that happens over a long period of time without stopping.
That would be steady.
Alan is talking about steady rain and snow.
But he says those downed trees wrecked plenty of homes.
To down a tree is the same as to fell a tree.
So a downed tree is a fallen tree, a tree that has been knocked down, either because it was cut down or because the wind blew it down.
To wreck...
W-R-E-C-K means to ruin, to destroy, to damage something.
Alan is saying that the trees fell on the houses and damaged the house.
Alan says it'll take months for us to fully recover from this storm.
To recover... means something similar to restore.
It means to return to the original condition after something has been damaged or injured.
We often talk about recover when dealing with someone who's sick or ill.
We hope they will recover.
We hope they will get better.
Monica says they're calling it the storm of the century.
This is a phrase that the newspapers and news programs on television like to use storm of the century.
Whenever you have a big storm, if it's a really big storm, the newspapers will say it's the storm of the century, meaning the most important or biggest storm in a hundred years.
That is almost certainly not true in most cases, of course.
There can only be one storm that was bigger than all the others.
But every year or two we hear this description of something being the storm of the century, when usually it isn't.
You'll also hear people talk about the crime of the century.
When someone is murdered or there's some serious or terrible crime, someone will call it the crime of the century, as if it were the worst crime in a hundred years.
Allen says, well, if we just get one of these storms this century, then that's more than enough.
Something that is more than enough is something that is too much more than what you want or more than what you need.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Are you all right?
Yes, we're fine, but that blizzard really caught us off guard, especially this time of year.
Have you seen the news?
I just watched it.
Overnight, the storm felled over 30 trees in and around the town and toppled utility lines.
City officials are saying that some residents may not get their electricity restored until the weekend.
That's terrible, especially with these unseasonably cold temperatures.
I heard the ferocious storm last night, but I didn't expect that homes would actually be in danger of washing away.
I don't know if any will actually be washed away unless we continue to get steady rain and snow, but those downed trees wrecked plenty of homes.
It'll take months for us to fully recover from this storm.
They're calling it the storm of the century.
Well, if we get just one of these storms this century, then that's more than enough.
She's a resident of beautiful Los Angeles, California, and she's our scriptwriter.
I speak, of course, of our very own Dr. Lucy Say.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
