Vocabulary to talk about time as if you were an expert

Meteorology is governed by words as evocative as "chubascos", "raviznas" or "winds of the west". However, we end up despising it by calling any kind of precipitation "rain", limiting ourselves to useful expressions in the elevator like "what a wind does," and watching the clouds just to take an Instagram photo.

Here is a guide with basic concepts, wild phrases and some tricks that experts offer to make your own predictions and look like you control the subject.

Attention to expressions

Look at the clouds to make bets

Cloudiness (i.e. "clouds" in expert mode) is one of the most reliable elements for predicting weather, especially in the case of precipitation (not rainfall). José Miguel Gallardo, a physicist and meteorologist from the State Weather Agency, shares a little trick with Verne: "the cirrhosis, those clouds that are a little threaded, are the ones that precede the fronts. If you see cirrhosis growing and the pressure is going down, it can rain." Just to know if the pressure's dropping, you'll need a barometer.

To leave someone speechless, look at the wake of the planes and you will be able to make a pretty close prediction: "if they dry up quickly, that indicates that the atmosphere is very dry, the weather is stable, and it will not rain. However, when we see that the steles remain in the sky, that tells us that a front is approaching and that in the short term there could be rain," Laplana says.

In Spain, "in the northwest, in Galicia or Asturias, it is easier for this to be fulfilled because the fronts come around, usually, but once the front reaches the interior of the peninsula many times it loses activity and usually stays in nothing." if there are Rainbows you can have another clue: "when you see it in the morning it is going to rain, and if you see it in the afternoon it will stop raining," Gallardo explains.

Vocabulario para hablar del tiempo como si fueras un experto

On the TV, you'll probably hear about the high clouds and the low clouds. The high ones are those that allow the passage of the rays of the sun and do not produce precipitation, while the middle and the lower ones do. Low clouds are usually strata or stratocumules (small and numerous), and can leave fog and mist.

"in the end, what matters most to people is whether it's going to rain, if they can lay their clothes, or if they can wash the car," Laplana adds, laughing.

So one important aspect of your posturing as an amateur meteorologist is to narrate how precipitation will evolve over time. Let us say that we are talking about the precipitation that will occur tomorrow. If we estimate that they will not last more than 30% of the day (for example, only two hours), then they will be occasional. When they exceed 60% of the day, we'll say they're persistent or continuous. And if they occur regularly with small interruptions, they are called intermittent. Before you talk about rain, you might talk about drizzle and, if things go any further, raindrops (strong, short precipitation and larger droplets, which suddenly appear and disappear and change intensity suddenly). You can also keep an ace up your sleeve, with terms such as "thickening rain" (precipitation whose droplets freeze on a surface).

For registration: the names of the wind

When you talk about the wind, first quote the direction and then the adjective indicating the speed. For example, "East winds occasionally strong." If the wind changes speed suddenly and only for a few moments, then it is a streak (or gust). And if you change direction, the verb to use is "spin" or "roll". To figure out the direction of the wind, the easiest way is to use a vane (they point to the point where the wind comes from, not where it's going), and if you're at sea, notice the small rumblings that form and advance over the surface: they'll tell you where the wind is blowing. Don't be overreacting: remember that in order to be hurried, the speed has to be greater than 120 km / h.

"each area has its nomenclature," Laplana explains about local winds. These are the most common in Spain, according to the Spanish Foundation for Science and the: the deer (blows along the Ebro valley), the trangontana (cold and turbulent, in the northeast of the Peninsula and in the Balearic Islands), the siroco (hot and dry, reaches the Mediterranean from the Sahara desert), the east and west of the Strait (intense), and the terral (hot and dry, occurs on the coast of the Cantabrian coast and the Alborán Sea). You will also hear about the trade winds, regular breezes caused by the rotation of the Earth.

Summer notes

  1. Anticiclón: El valor de presión más alto, que se marca con una "A". Con saber que hay un anticiclón, podrás decir que la estabilidad atmosférica y el aire descendente evitarán la formación de nubosidad (siempre suena mejor que decir solo "nubes") y que habrá menos probabilidades de lluvia.
  2. Borrasca: Se da cuando la presión alcanza su nivel más bajo (lo verás señalado con la letra "B"), provocando inestabilidad, lluvia y viento intenso.

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