Weather English Listening Practice (All Levels)

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What weather do you like?

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Hi, this is Language Learning Report Card Podcast.

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I’m Vickie Kelty.

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I teach English online, focusing on speaking.

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Today the topic is weather.

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Listen to see what weather I like and don’t like.

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Then tell me

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your preferences.

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One type of weather I like is sunny weather.

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In summer, it’s sunny.

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I wear sunglasses and I wear sunscreen.

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I don’t like when it’s hot.

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And in the summer, it’s very hot.

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But I really like sunny weather.

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What about you?

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Do you like when it’s sunny?

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One weather I don’t like is when it’s rainy.

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Actually, today is rainy.

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In fact, it’s raining at this moment.

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In spring, it’s rainy.

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And it’s also rainy in summer, fall, and winter.

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Not every day is rainy.

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but there is a lot of rain.

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I like spring and fall and sometimes winter when it’s rainy and cool.

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I don’t like summer when it’s rainy and hot.

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I wear my raincoat.

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I rarely use an umbrella.

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Do you like rain?

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Another type of weather I like is when it’s snowy.

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It’s rarely snowy where I live in Spain.

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I like snowy weather.

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I like to play in the snow.

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I wear my winter coat and scarf and hat and gloves.

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And sometimes I wear my galoshes.

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But really,

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Galoshes are for rain.

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I don’t love cold weather, but snow is fun.

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I love snow in the winter, especially snow at Christmas.

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Do you like snow?

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Another type of weather I don’t like is windy weather.

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I hate wind.

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It hurts my ears.

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Wind is horrible.

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Wind is possible in all seasons.

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In fall, winter, spring, or summer.

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Sometimes I wear earmuffs when it’s windy.

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Earmuffs cover my ears and it helps.

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I really don’t like wind.

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Do you like wind?

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Another weather I like is when it’s cloudy.

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This weather is possible in any season: summer, fall, winter, or spring.

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I like cloudy weather

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because I don’t need to wear sunglasses.

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I don’t wear special clothes when it’s cloudy.

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Do you like cloudy weather?

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And one more type of weather that I don’t like.

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I don’t like stormy weather.

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I don’t like storms.

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I don’t like thunder and lightning.

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And obviously, I don’t like rain.

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Sometimes rain and storms are okay.

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When I’m at home,

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Storms and rain are okay, but not my favorite.

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I really don’t like storms when it’s hot.

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In the summer, it’s hot and storms are horrible.

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I guess I prefer storms

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in the fall or in spring when it’s cool.

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Maybe.

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I don’t know.

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I really don’t like storms.

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Do you like storms?

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Well, now it’s your turn to tell me all about the weather you like

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and the weather you don’t like.

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Before we go, do your self-evaluation.

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How easy can you talk about the weather?

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Satisfactory or Development Needed?

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Use this information to decide to listen to this episode again or

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to another episode.

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Remember, you can find more listening practice at vickiekelty.com.

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That’s all from me.

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I need to put on my raincoat and go for a walk.

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Bye-bye now.

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Past weather. Hi, this is Vickie Kelty with the Language Learning Report Card Podcast. I teach English online focusing on speaking. And today we’re going to talk about past weather. Are you ready to get started? Then let’s go.

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So, the last time I had a really sunny, hot weather was last summer. I went to Greece with my family on vacation and it was so hot. Every day was sunny. Every day was super duper hot.

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It was perfect for summer vacation, actually. And I also was very happy to be in Greece because I had the opportunity to go to the beach and I went swimming and it was 100% okay that it was very hot.

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Okay, your turn. What was your summer like last year? Was it hot or sunny or something different? Let me know. Now this spring, I must say, it’s been super rainy.

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We’ve had so much rain. And in fact, the last episode I recorded, it was raining that day while I was recording the episode. So, rain has been such a big part of this spring, which I suppose is

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normal because they say spring is the time for rain. So, did you have a quote unquote “typical spring” this year? Has it been raining a lot where you are? For snow,

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The last really big snow we had in Spain was in January 2021. So, it has been a while since we had a lot of snow. Sometimes it has snowed

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a little, but the last big snow was a storm and it was the storm Filomena that gave lots of problems and it was too much snow, I would say. It was fun to have snow

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because we don’t normally have snow here very often, but it caused a lot of problems. So maybe only a little snow next time, please. Do you get snow where you live? When was the last big snow that you had where you are?

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As for wind, it’s also been so windy here. I think every season has had a lot of wind this year. The fall, the winter, and the spring. We’re not into summer yet. Maybe we won’t have

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a lot of wind in summer. Knock on wood. But it’s been very windy and there has been problems because of the wind also. I’m not a big fan of the wind, so I definitely have not been enjoying

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the windy weather and I hope that tomorrow will not be windy. What about you? Do you like the wind? Have you been having windy weather where you live? Because this spring has been so rainy, it’s also been

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very cloudy. Last week when I was recording and it was raining; it was so cloudy. I miss the sun when the weather is so cloudy because it makes the sky very gray. And

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the winter and spring has been very gray lately. Last year, it wasn’t so cloudy. For storms, I mentioned the storm Filomena that

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had a lot of snow. But thunderstorms with lightning and thunder, obviously, and rain, we haven’t had a lot of thunderstorms. But not too long ago, there was a thunderstorm and it happened

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while I was walking. It wasn’t expected. So, I hurried home and finished exercising at home that day. Now, when I was little in Nebraska in the summer, we often had

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really good thunderstorms. And when I say good, I mean that they were big thunderstorms. So, if you like thunderstorms, maybe you should visit Nebraska in the summer. You might have the opportunity to experience a big, strong thunderstorm.

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Do you like thunderstorms? When was the last big thunderstorm where you live? Okay, so now it’s your turn to talk about the weather. Tell me all about what the weather was like while you listened to this episode.

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And what about you? How has your spring been this year? What about your winter or your fall? How have they been? Maybe you listened to this after summer. How was your summer this year? And how about last year? What was the weather like then? Before we go, do your self-evaluation.

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How easy can you talk about past weather? Satisfactory or Development Needed? Use this information to decide to listen to this episode again or listen to another episode. Remember, you can find more listening practice at VickieKelty.com. That’s all from me.

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I hope that yesterday you had lovely weather and today too. Bye now.

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Weather phenomena.

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Hi, this is Language Learning Report Card Podcast.

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I’m Vickie Kelty.

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I teach English online, focusing on speaking.

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And today, like I said, we’re talking about weather phenomena.

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So let’s dive right in and get freaky with that weather.

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Okay, not really.

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What I mean is that we will be touching on a lot of different weather-related topics today.

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And remember that I am not a scientist, nor do I have experience forecasting the weather.

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So, this is all just my lived experience.

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So, take it with a grain of salt, okay?

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So, let’s see, growing up in Nebraska, sometimes we would have droughts because Nebraska has a lot of farmland and so hot summers with just the sun beating down, heat waves, those things without rain are not fabulous for farmland.

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And

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Although I was never a farmer, that’s just my take on the science behind why droughts happen.

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You can research the exact science behind it.

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But the interesting thing for me was that we did this sort of water rationing.

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And so, in Lincoln, where I grew up,

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They would have sometimes if there were droughts or there was a potential drought, they would have us be more cautious with our water use.

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So, when it was time to water your lawn, you would pay attention to what day of the week it was.

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And if you had an odd address,

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you would water on certain days, as versus if you had an even number address.

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So, like if your address ended in a 2, then you were an even number.

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If your address ended in a 1, you were an odd number, right?

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Get the idea?

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So, then you would only water, in theory, on the days that were assigned to you.

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So, like Tuesday, Thursday for odd numbers and Monday, Wednesday for even numbers.

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etc.

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And what about you?

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Where you’re at,

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What is the sun beating down on your area?

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Let me know.

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Now, rain, mostly the things that I’ve been around or experienced are flooding.

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I had

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One of my apartments flood once due to rain here in Spain.

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And it was quite the, like, thankfully it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was just a shock more than anything else.

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So, the landlady came over with some of her family and with little

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plastic food containers, we tried to get the water out of the apartment little by little once the rain had subsided.

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Now people who have dealt with much, much more serious and dangerous levels of flooding are like the torrential rain that caused flooding just a couple years ago here in Spain.

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in Valencia.

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It was all over the news in other parts of Spain as well.

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I was lucky that my specific area where I live wasn’t affected by it, but it was probably something that you saw on the news.

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And we’ve also had that situation happen in Nebraska before.

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We had a really

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big incident in 2019 because of the snow melting just too quickly.

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And so, it caused flooding and it wasn’t expected and wasn’t, but what flooding is, right?

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So,

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Yeah, what’s the rain getting up to where you are?

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I hope it is behaving itself.

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Next incident on our list is, back in… back in the day,

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I was starting high school, and we had a snowstorm, not a blizzard, but it was so bad that we were out of school for like a week because of it.

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Power lines were knocked down and it just, it caused lots of difficulties for people.

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And

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We were, some of us, I mean, I specifically, I guess I shouldn’t say we, I don’t know how other people were feeling or dealing with it.

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But, me personally, I remember a lot of fun being had because of it, like building forts and snow fights and just not having to go to school.

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Woohoo.

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And yeah, so,

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the upsides of these kinds of snowy disasters are the fun that you get to have with the snow.

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That is like the only upside and probably the upside that a child would find in those situations.

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Because I know when we had this snowstorm Filomena back in, what was it, 2021?

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I mentioned it in another episode.

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And

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With that, we had, it was like really icy in town here in Spain.

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And we are just not really prepared for snow in this area because it’s not something we expect to have.

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And I think that was a huge difference between the snow in Nebraska, which we anticipate annually, though not as early as we had it that year.

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when I was in high school, but here in Spain, we just don’t expect it in my area in the quantities that we had it.

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So, it did cause a lot of problems.

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And we actually, I remember trying to get our van out of the garage and it was just like,

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on its last leg, the van said, I’m sorry, I can’t deal with this weather.

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And you know what?

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Me too, buddy, me too.

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But, or rather, me neither.

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Me neither, buddy, me neither.

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And one of the things that we didn’t realize was gonna be an issue was our plants on the balcony.

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And so, we did lose some cactus and

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What did we have?

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Cactus.

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We had a cactus and some aloe vera plants that were on the balcony that didn’t

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make it through Filomena.

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So, I did mention that I’ve never been in any blizzards, but I should say that I have been around blizzards, but only the Dairy Queen type.

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If you haven’t tried them, you definitely should.

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Very yummy.

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I like the Butterfinger ones or Snickers or really, I’m not that picky.

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If it has some chocolate, I’m probably going to like it.

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Blowing right on over to wind issues.

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We have had some horrible wind crap going around this year.

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And we had these gusts of wind that took down trees.

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I went on a walk.

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I laughed because it was

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a lower speed of wind at the time when I left for my walk.

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It was like, I don’t know, 16 miles an hour.

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And then by the time I got home, it had gone up to 23 miles an hour and I was getting blown down.

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So, I said, back home.

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And then my husband sent me pictures of trees that had been knocked down and I counted myself lucky

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for the path that I had taken and the fact that I missed all of the trees being blown around.

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So just a reminder to stay safe in those different situations, of course.

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And I know that different areas in Spain had gale force winds, so we were actually on the like lower end of things once again, which

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we will not complain about.

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There were other times that the wind knocked tiles off, or not tiles, what do you call those things?

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Shingles from the roofs that have come flying off and

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As someone who goes for walks regularly, that is something that I do get quite concerned about hearing that the wind was causing all of this damage around town and just being super grateful that I and other people were not around when those moments of, when those dangerous moments occurred.

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And frankly, I’m just like so sick of the wind problems.

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I don’t know what the benefits are to wind.

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Maybe you can let me in on that secret.

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But the point of view I have is I’m just sick of it.

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But you tell me, what’s your take on wind?

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Now, as far as cloudy weather causing issues, yeah, you really got me on that one.

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I will leave this

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to your wisdom and knowledge and you can tell me maybe Seasonal Affective Disorder is something that gets affected by cloudy weather?

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I mean, if there’s not a lot of sun and it’s really gray outside and like that can be really depressing.

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So,

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I can see SAD being activated potentially.

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I don’t know.

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I put this in your hands.

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You are the boss of the cloudy topic.

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Let me know what is up with clouds.

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And lastly, drum roll, is the

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storm events.

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Now, some people are storm chasers.

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I had like one moment of storm chasing in my life and then that was about it because I just get really freaked out by them.

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And probably having some respect for nature is not a bad idea.

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Obviously, I don’t do a very good job of that when it comes to wind, but

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I haven’t had too many bad storm incidents.

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I have gone for a couple of walks in town when there’s been lightning, which maybe wasn’t the best idea, but we’ll try and be on the safer side,

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Okay?

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And I did try to use what I have learned as a child that when you hear the thunder, you wait to see, oh wait, no, the opposite.

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When you hear the lightning, no, sorry, you don’t hear lightning.

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When you see a flash of lightning and then you hear the thunder, you count between the lightning and the thunder how many seconds passed.

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And that is supposed to let you know how many miles away the storm is.

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And so, that’s what I would try and do during my walks here in town because I was like, okay, so long as it’s not super close, then I can finish my walk.

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Of course, I didn’t remember like what the math was.

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So, I just counted each second as the distance.

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So, I said, like if it was 3 seconds between the lightning and the thunder, then I said it was 3 miles away.

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But I guess it’s actually supposed to be 5 seconds equals one mile.

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So, math causing me problems again, you guys.

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Anywho.

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The storms that we had in Nebraska in the summers, like early summer, sometimes led to tornadoes because they were like prime tornado weather.

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I mean, these were some pretty serious storms we’re talking about.

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I mean, duh! If they’re causing twisters to come around town, then they must be pretty intense, right?

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I never

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saw a tornado in person, which I am completely happy about, I would prefer not to see a tornado because if you’re up close and personal with one, I don’t think that’s probably very safe, just guessing.

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But I have seen the aftermath of them and man, do they destroy stuff.

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I mean,

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A lot of the things we talked about today are pretty destructive.

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So weather, man, yeah, it’s a beast.

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Okay, it’s your turn.

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What can you tell me about different weather phenomena you have experienced or heard about?

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Before we go, make sure to do your self-evaluation.

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How easy can you talk about weather phenomena?

00:15:30

Satisfactory or Development Needed.

00:15:33

Use that info to decide whether to listen to this episode again or go listen to another episode.

00:15:42

Remember, you can find more listening practice at vickiekelty.com.

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That’s all from me.

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Hope the weather treats you super kindly.

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Is your BFF this week, this year, and especially today.

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Bye-bye now.