73 - Fun and common expressions about rain and hot weather in American English - Varios modismos sobre el calor y la lluvia en EEUU

[00:00:00] Hi, welcome to the No Te Rindas Intermediate English Stories Podcast. Este es un podcast para hispanohablantes que quieren mejorar su comprensión aditiva del inglés de los Estados Unidos. Soy tu presentador Goyo, un maestro que vive en Atlanta, Georgia, USA, y soy de herencia mexicana.

[00:00:24] Una vez al mes, presento una lección que enseña inglés utilizando una anécdota breve. Our long time listeners will note that my brother Gabe is not on the show today. Gabe and I still talk weekly, but his work schedule has changed, and so in order to continue the podcast, I have made a few changes.

[00:00:49] From now on, I will focus on one short story each episode, all by myself. Now I live in the Northern Hemisphere, so right now we are in the middle of summer, and it is hot. Around 4pm every day here in Atlanta, Georgia, that's where I live, there is a high possibility of rain. And it is usually not light rain. Es un aguacero.

[00:01:18] Cae un chaparrón. In English we have a variety of expressions for talking about both this extreme heat and heavy rain. So today I'm going to talk about Jimmy. Jimmy. Now Jimmy works for a landscaping company in Metro Atlanta. He is one of five employees in his company.

[00:01:47] So Jimmy supervises one other worker named Chris. And he reports to his boss is the owner of the company, Hector. And Hector is very busy running his company. So he cannot answer his phone regularly throughout the day.

[00:02:09] And so Jimmy leaves messages for Hector twice a day throughout the week to update him on his progress with the clients and with Chris. O sea, Jimmy lo actualiza a su jefe por recados. Y vamos a escuchar estos recados de una semana típica. So let's listen to some messages that Jimmy leaves for Hector.

[00:02:37] After each one, I'll stop and talk about the weather expressions that he uses. And other expressions too. I'll do hot first and then rain after. Now the method of teaching that I am using here holds that by tying these expressions to a specific context and to specific mental images.

[00:03:05] That you have a better chance of remembering the expression when you hear it again and maybe using it yourself. I hope that you enjoy these voicemails. All right. The first expression is, it's so hot that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. It's so hot that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.

[00:03:40] It's so hot that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. Welcome. And we're picking up some drinks at the Quick Trip right now. And we're trying to stay out of the sun for a bit. Phew! You know, it's so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. Hey there. We'll do that new client off of Terrell Mill next. Hi. How are you? And then if we can beat the rain, we'll finish up at the Kowalski's off Powers Ferry Road afterwards.

[00:04:10] Talk to you soon. Okay. So, Jimmy said, it's so hot that you can fry an egg on the sidewalk. Or it's so hot that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. Could fry an egg on the sidewalk. I know sometimes we get confused as English learners coming from Spanish about the difference between on and in.

[00:04:38] And this would be on the sidewalk, not in the sidewalk. Another related preposition here is the word off. You heard me say off Terrell Mill Road. And then off Powers Ferry Road. Now off, in this case, just means that it's a turn from. So I'm driving on Powers Ferry Road.

[00:05:04] And I turn to a smaller road or street that's connected to Powers Ferry where there may be a neighborhood. And so that neighborhood is said to be off Powers Ferry Road. Off. So it just kind of means near in this case. It's near Powers Ferry Road. And then I also use the word quick trip in my story.

[00:05:30] Quick trip is a very famous, prominent local gas station that we have here in Georgia. Okay, our next expression is hotter than blue blazes. Hotter than blue blazes. And this comes from 19th century American English. The blue part of the flame is the hottest. So a blue blaze.

[00:05:59] Blaze is related to fire. Is the hottest. So when you say blue blaze, at least in the 19th century, you are referring to the hottest fire, which meant hell. So you're saying it's hotter than hell. So that's hotter than blue blazes. Tuesday, 10 0 7 a.m. Hector, I have some bad news.

[00:06:27] I forgot to get the extra batteries for the weed eaters. And we're kind of stuck here. Can you bring them? Please hurry. It's hotter than blue blazes and the AC in your truck is not working today. Okay, so Jimmy is waiting on Hector to bring the batteries and he's waiting in a vehicle without clima.

[00:06:57] We said the AC in the truck doesn't work. The AC refers to the air conditioner or a clima. So, el aire acondicionado no está funcionando en este momento. It's hotter than blue blazes. It's really, really hot. Okay, I really like this next expression. It's hotter than a $2 pistol. It's hotter than a $2 pistol.

[00:07:24] So if you can imagine purchasing a used gun, a used pistola, and it only costs a little bit of money, it's probably not a very good firearm, right? It's not a very good weapon. It's not high quality. So when you fire it, two, three times, it starts to get really warm in your hand, right?

[00:07:50] It starts to get so hot that you, maybe it stops working or you can't touch it or you burn your hand. It's hot like a gun that's not well made after it's been fired a few times. Wednesday, 1241 PM. Hector, we just finished lunch and we're about to head over to Roswell now. Man, you have got to get the air conditioner fixed in this thing.

[00:08:18] The upholstery was already hotter than a $2 pistol and rolling down the windows is not cutting it. So in this example, the skin of the guys in the truck is touching what's called the upholstery in English. Upholstery, and I'm sorry, I don't know upholstery in Spanish. Upholstery refers to the fabric, la tela, of los asientos inside of a vehicle.

[00:08:45] So upholstery in the sun gets hot. And so if the air conditioner doesn't work, the upholstery can stay really, really warm. All right. So that was hotter than a $2 pistol. Another expression Jimmy uses is rolling down the windows is not cutting it. Rolling down the windows is not cutting it.

[00:09:11] Now, I love this expression and it makes zero sense idiomatically. So let's talk about it. If something is not cutting it, it means that it's not doing the job. So if, for example, I say, hey, my horn is not working in my car.

[00:09:37] And so I roll down the windows of my car and I yell, honk, honk. We would say, man, that's not cutting it. That's not cutting. It means nobody can hear my klaxon, right? My sound of a klaxon of a horn. And just because I'm saying honk, honk, I need my horn to function. Right? I need my actual horn to function. So my fake horn, my voice is not cutting it.

[00:10:07] No está sirviendo. All right. Our last heat expression is, it's not so much the heat. It's the humidity. It's not so much the heat. It's the humidity. So this is a expression very popular here in the south.

[00:10:29] The southern part of the United States is close to sea level in many places. And the air is heavy. So there's a lot of humedad in the air. And so when you perspire, when you sweat, cuando sudas, the water doesn't evaporate.

[00:10:53] And so you feel warm after you sweat because your sweat cannot do its job. So it's not so much the heat. It's the humidity means it's hot. But if it weren't so humid, if the air were not so laden or full of water, water vapor, you would feel better sweating.

[00:11:21] Thursday, 9.56 AM. Hey, did you get the keys to the truck box out of my tool belt? I can't find them until I do. We can't, uh... Young man, I thought you boys looked like you could use some heist tea. Use the compressor. Oh, yes ma'am. Thank you very much. I don't know how you boys work in this heat. Yes ma'am. It's very, very hot. My husband used to work outside on the power lines where he's from in Arizona. Uh huh.

[00:11:52] But there it's a dry heat. Here it's not so much the heat, it's the humidity. Yes ma'am. Okay, so again, it's not so much the heat, it's the humidity. If you said or heard, it's not the heat, it's the humidity, that's a little simpler to say as a language learner. It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

[00:12:18] You're just saying, uh, the air is full of humidity and so you cannot feel comfortable perspiring or sweating in it. Okay, so those were our four voicemail messages about heat. Now let's listen to some about rain. The first expression is going to be pretty direct and that's, it's pouring. It's pouring. It's really pouring.

[00:12:48] Now I chose this expression because coming back and forth between English and Spanish, we have very different notions about how we throw water, if you will. Because pouring is, there's a long list of words in the dictionary for pouring, but the ones I'm looking for here are like derramar or tirar agua.

[00:13:14] So when you say it's pouring outside, it's the image in your mind is of a jarra tirando agua in un vaso. Right? It's like a, I think you call that in some contexts a chorro. And I mean that to mean like a jet of water. Monday, 3 PM.

[00:13:41] Hey, we finished the new client before the rain, but now we're sitting in the parking lot at a Starbucks waiting for this to pass. And it is really pouring. I don't know if we'll be able to cut any more grass today, Hector. Okay, so it's really pouring. You can also say it's a downpour. Like an aguacero and a downpour are sort of synonyms.

[00:14:13] And waiting for the rain to pass. It's like esperar que pase la lluvia. Okay, acabe la lluvia. All right, the next expression is one of my favorites and that's, it's raining cats and dogs. It's raining cats and dogs.

[00:14:35] I guess the idea being that if you have many cats and many dogs in the same space, that they will make a lot of noise, right? Because they'll be barking and meowing. So it's raining cats and dogs is a common phrase we use for saying it's raining really heavily. Tuesday, 4 42 PM. Good God, man.

[00:15:03] It is raining cats and dogs out here. It's a good thing that we finished up that Bell's Ferry address before the downpour started. So one more time, it's raining cats and dogs. And Jimmy mentioned a downpour there, downpour.

[00:15:21] All right, this next expression is a bit colorful, a bit informal and a bit vulgar, but also very popular. And it uses the word piss, piss, which is mear in Spanish. So it's an informal way to say urinate or pee in English.

[00:15:50] And that is, it's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock. It's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock. 4 0 6 PM. Yeah, Hector, the client kept giving us smaller little jobs to do, even after we were, we were finished working.

[00:16:20] And man, it was really annoying. But thank God it started raining and he couldn't keep on adding more and more and more little things. Uh, it's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock right now. And I've never been so happy to see the rain in my life. I'll check back in with you later.

[00:16:38] So the client saw that Jimmy and Chris were finished, but said, Oh, would you also do this work at this bush or shrub or arbusto? Or, um, would you, you know, focus on these flowers or something extra? And that was not part of the original work.

[00:17:01] So it started to rain and it relieved, it saved Jimmy from the clients and his longer list because it was like a cow pissing on a flat rock, which is a very, very heavy rain. All right. Our last expression is it's raining to beat the band. It's raining to beat the band.

[00:17:29] So again, this is an expression from the 19th century in American English and bands would play in public bands being, uh, groups of musical instruments. So I'm imagining, you know, trumpets and drums and maybe flutes, uh, maybe tubas.

[00:17:50] Um, that would play at a parade or a festival or, um, a celebration. And, you know, there were no speakers back then. No había bocinas. So that was the loudest thing you could have was a musical instrument.

[00:18:12] So if you could beat the band, right, if you could play louder than the band or do something to make more noise than the band, that was like saying, that's the loudest thing we have that we can do. That's the loudest. So it's raining to beat the band just means it's raining really loudly. Thursday, 6 PM. Okay. Um, we're finally leaving Canton and headed back.

[00:18:42] There were some wasp nests around the barn we were working on and, uh, that slowed us down a little bit. Uh, traffic looks to be a nightmare on I-575 and it's raining to beat the band. But hopefully we can be against traffic coming back in towards the city and, uh, we should be back soon. So in this case, Jimmy is in Canton, which is farther away from Atlanta.

[00:19:09] Uh, and then the other places he's farther away from home from home and he's been delayed by a bus bus. So it slowed him down a little bit and he, he started having to work or pack up the truck or drive at that part of the day when it's really raining. Like I said, after four o'clock every day, it really threatens to rain here in, in the Atlanta area in the summertime.

[00:19:40] So he got stuck in the rain in the truck and it was raining to beat the band. It was raining to beat the band. All right. Before I do our quiz, I want to thank you for listening to these voicemails and I hope that they were useful for you. But let's also thank our regular listeners. And of course, welcome any new ones we have.

[00:20:08] We have a regular listener in Baku city, Azerbaijan that I want to give a shout out to. Thank you very much. Uh, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I see you regularly tuning in. Thank you. Uh, tengo un sobrino que trabaja, que es mexicano, que trabajaba en, en, uh, Toronto como en la construcción. Supongo que es, es posible que sea una persona en construcción que, que quiere dominar el inglés.

[00:20:38] Bueno, ojalá que ayude este show. So, and finally, uh, Katie, Texas has a friend of ours who is a loyal listener. Saludos y gracias por continuar con el podcast. Now, if you can believe it listeners, more than 40 different cities all over the world, listen to my last broadcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. It's time for our quiz.

[00:21:08] Question number one, which of these expressions does not mean, does not mean that it is really hot outside? You could fry an egg on the sidewalk. It's hotter than a rabbit in a ski mask, or it's hotter than a $2 pistol.

[00:21:41] All right. If you did not recognize it's hotter than a rabbit in a ski mask, you are correct. That is not a common expression for how hot it is. Um, a rabbit in a ski mask would be hot. It's like a cat carrying a hat in an winter, um, more or less. So that would be hot.

[00:22:09] But anyway, frying an egg on the sidewalk and hotter than a $2 pistol are common expressions. And question number two, which one of these does not mean it is raining hard? It's pouring outside. It's raining cats and dogs or it's raining so hard that the frogs are holding a protest.

[00:22:39] It's raining cats and dogs or it's pouring outside. All right. If you said it's raining so hard, the frogs are holding a protest. You are correct. That is not an expression we use to describe. It's raining hard in English. We say it's pouring outside.

[00:23:09] It's raining cats and dogs. It's raining to beat the band or it's ran like a cow pissing on a flat rock. Thank you again for listening. And now I have to go cut the grass and in my own yard. Yuck. So it's, uh, it's hotter than a $2 pistol out there, but it's gotta be done.

[00:23:36] And I will be traveling to California, uh, soon on vacation. So, um, wish me luck on, on our trip. We're going to see Los Angeles and San Francisco. So I'm very excited about that. And please watch for the next episode of no te rindas intermediate English stories on the first Sunday of every month. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.