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Hey everyone and welcome back to
the Understandable English 

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Podcast. 
I hope that you are having a 

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great day. 
So today I would like to talk 

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about storms and storms, 
particularly in the UK. 

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So what is a storm, you might 
ask? 

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The official definition. 
So the dictionary definition is 

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a violent disturbance of the 
atmosphere with strong winds and

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usually rain, Thunder, lightning
or snow. 

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So essentially it is extreme 
weather and usually with wind or

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rain and here in the UK we have 
quite a few storms in the winter

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time. 
Well, not every year, but it 

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seems like increasingly we have 
had more and more storms and in 

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the UK back in 20/15/16, the Met
Office, so the government body 

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that looks at weather, so 
looking at weather warnings and 

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extreme weather, they started to
name storms. 

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So for bigger storms they would 
call them a name like Oliver for

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example. 
And when they name storms, they 

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start with each letter of the 
alphabet always starting at A. 

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So for example Storm Alex and 
then Storm Ben, B for Ben, Storm

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Charlie, C for Charlie and and 
so on I think you understand. 

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And this year, so since August 
in the last sort of year, we 

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have had at least one named 
storm every month in the UK. 

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That is a lot. 
And in December we had three 

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named storms. 
And this year there has already 

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been three named storms in 
January, which is crazy. 

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And those storms have been 
called Henk, Isha and Jocelyn. 

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Jocelyn is the latest storm in 
the UK. 

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So you might wonder, how bad are
these storms? 

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Well Isha, which was a storm 
that happened about one week 

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ago, now killed two people. 
Two people sadly died related to

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the storm, Which for for such 
for a country with 68 million 

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people is not an incredibly 
extreme event, but it was felt 

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and affected everywhere across 
the UK. 

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This storm brought strong winds 
of up to almost 80 mile per hour

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across the UK and lots of damage
was done to people's houses, 

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cars, gardens and many people 
were also injured by objects 

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flying through the air with the 
strong winds because the UK is 

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an island or Great Britain is an
island. 

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And then there's the island of 
Ireland, Northern Ireland, which

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is still part of the UK. 
There is a lot of coastline and 

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as a result, strong waves from 
these winds, these big waves of 

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water hitting the coast during 
the stormy weather and it can be

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a little bit scary. 
So Storm Isha last week hit the 

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UK and I will tell you sort of 
my experience of this storm 

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during the day. 
We were by the seaside and it 

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wasn't super stormy, but we 
looked out at the ocean and the 

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waves were very strong. 
So we kind of knew, yeah, 

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there's a storm coming, and 
usually you can see it in the 

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ocean first. 
So the waves arriving to the 

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shore before the storm arrives 
to the land. 

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We drove home and I took a small
sleep in the afternoon, probably

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around 5:00 in the early 
evening. 

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When I woke up at 6:00 PM, I 
heard very strong wind. 

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It almost sounded like someone 
screaming or whistling like whoo

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Hoo outside it was very light 
and everything was shaking. 

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The lights were flickering so 
the lights were going on and 

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off, on and off, on and off very
fast. 

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Now this was a small effect of 
the storm from the the heavy 

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wind, but what did happen was 
lots of the plants in our garden

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were blown all over the place 
and even some of the things in 

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the garden were broken or 
damaged. 

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But I can't complain because 
everyone was safe and we had no 

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serious problems. 
But I would not have wanted to 

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go outside during the storm. 
It would have been very 

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difficult to walk in that 
weather and actually it can be 

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quite dangerous to drive a car 
in that weather because there is

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a risk of trees falling. 
And this is actually what caused

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a few people to die. 
Two people in the UK, they 

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crashed into fallen trees. 
Especially in the dark, windy 

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weather, it is hard to see when 
a tree has fallen on small 

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country roads. 
So I really hope that almost all

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of the storms for this season 
have finished because it feels 

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like there have been so, so 
many. 

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Even after Storm Isha, which I 
just talked about, there was 

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another storm directly 
afterwards called Storm Jocelyn 

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and that means that this year we
have had 10 storms across the 

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autumn and winter months since 
ju since August. 

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That is crazy. 
And to to put in context, last 

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season, so last year from 2022 
to 23 we only had two storms, 

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two. 
And now we've had ten. 

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That is crazy. 
And the last time we had 10 or 

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more storms was 2015 with 11 
storms. 

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I really hope that next year 
will be a better year for 

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weather. 
So what do you think about 

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storms? 
Do you have any extreme weather 

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where you are from? 
I hope that you've enjoyed this 

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episode and I might do another 
episode about different types of

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weather, maybe extreme weather 
at some point in the future. 

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In general, the weather in the 
UK is quite calm if you even 

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think. 
One year ago we had only two 

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storms, so don't be scared about
coming to the UK and visiting 

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even in the winter or autumn 
months. 

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But if I had to recommend, I 
would say visit the UK in 

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summertime. 
You will get better weather of 

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course, and the country is not 
too hot anyway. 

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Even in the summertime we get 
normal temperatures of around 

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20° and nothing crazy and you 
won't get those crazy annoying 

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storms. 
So I hope that wherever you are 

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listening to this that you're 
safe, happy and healthy and I 

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wish you the best for the rest 
of your day. 

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I hope to see you in the next 
episode of this podcast. 

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Goodbye.