Hi Bob the Canadian here.
You can see behind me that we have quite a few clouds today.
So I thought I would do a video to help you learn English and talk about rain and snow
- where rain goes after it falls and kind of just teach you some English along the way.
So if you look up in the sky behind me you can see that we have some dark clouds.
We could call these dark clouds.
We could call them rain clouds.
If they were a little bit darker I would probably call them storm clouds, and two things fall
out of the sky, two kinds of water.
We have raindrops, so a raindrop is, is the smallest little drop of water that falls out
of the sky.
And you can’t quite see it but the other thing that can fall is snow, and snow falls
as snowflakes.
So you can have raindrops that fall out of the sky and you can have snowflakes.
There’s a couple different kinds of rain that falls out of the sky.
You can have a drizzle.
A drizzle is when hardly any rain is falling out of the sky.
You can have a sprinkling.
You can say it’s sprinkling outside.
When it’s sprinkling outside it means that even bigger drops are falling.
You could have a light shower.
A light shower would be when you almost need an umbrella if there’s a light shower.
And then you can say it’s pouring rain.
And when it’s pouring rain there is just a lot of rain.
So if you look right here you can see puddles.
After it rains you end up with puddles which are small pools of water that form on driveways,
in parking lots.
This particular set of puddles that is in my driveway at home.
And puddles, they kind of stay until the sun dries them up.
And we call that evaporating.
We say that the sun causes the water to evaporate.
So these puddles, they don’t go anywhere.
The water doesn’t flow anywhere, and we just have to wait a few days for them to evaporate
or for them to dry up.
That’s kind of fun!
So if you look way up there on my shed we have what we call an eavestrough.
An eavestrough is a gutter, it’s a trough along the side of a building so that when
it rains the water goes from the roof into the eavestrough.
From there - I’ll zoom up a bit if I can - from there you’ll see that the eavestrough
is connected to a downspout.
I’m not sure I went high enough.
And the downspout takes the water down.
So this over here, this is the downspout.
This one just opens onto the ground.
On my house the downspout goes into a cistern which is a place where you can store water.
So I’m, I’m standing out here along the road.
You can see the road over there, and this right here is what we call a ditch.
So when it rains, when the rain hits the road over there it flows off the road into the
ditch, and the ditch takes all that water down the road usually to a stream or river,
we’ll go look at that in a minute.
So a ditch isn’t just something you’ll find along the road.
You’ll also have ditches in fields.
So this is a small ditch in this field so that the water has somewhere to go when it
rains.
So behind me here we have a small stream.
It’s flowing underneath this bridge here and you can see the stream has fairly fast
moving water and it’s very shallow.
Streams are usually fairly shallow.
If it was summer and it was warmer you could walk through the stream because it’s only
about this deep.
So we would call this a stream, you can also call it a brook.
And if you’ve ever heard the the term “a babbling brook”, if I stop talking for a
minute here you’ll be able to hear this stream makes kind of a babbling sound so let’s,
let’s listen to it, not the car going over the bridge.
So hopefully you could hear that a bit as the water flows over the rocks, it’s like
the stream is talking a little bit.
So behind me you’ll see what we call a pond.
I’m not sure exactly how to describe a pond.
It’s definitely bigger than a puddle, and it’s smaller than a lake.
So it’s really just a small body of water.
So behind me you’ll see a river.
A river is obviously a lot bigger than a stream or brook.
Once the rain has fallen, and the raindrops have flowed through ditches and streams, eventually
all of the water ends up in the river.
And rivers are really cool because people can do recreational activities on a river.
You can go fishing on a river.
It’s big enough that it will have fish.
You can go boating on a river.
You can go canoeing on a river.
So I was on my way to the lake and we’re still going there by the way, but I was driving
by this river, this is called the Grand River, and I remembered that there was a couple of
things I forgot to mention about rivers.
One is the edge of a river is called the riverbank.
And sometimes the water in a river can rise, and the water can go over the bank and you
can have a flood.
So a flood is when water goes where it’s not supposed to go.
Rivers do that quite often where the water level will rise, especially in the spring
in Canada because everything melts.
So as all the snow and ice melts the water rises in the river and sometimes it floods,
goes over the bank of the river and you have a flood.
So let’s, let’s keep going so we can get to the lake.
So behind me is a river and that river flows into a lake.
You can see the pier behind me and a small lighthouse.
And way in the distance all of that water is a lake.
This lake is called Lake Erie.
I’m going to walk out to the end of the pier, as I’m walking out if you look back,
one of the cool things about lakes is they often have a beach - a sandy beach.
So similar to the ocean, lakes sometimes have a beach, obviously in the middle of January
no one’s swimming, but there is a bit of a sandy beach there where in the summer you
could come and wear your bathing suit and go for a little swim.
You can also see there’s a few waves coming in, there’s a few waves rolling in so lakes
are big enough that they have waves.
We’re at the end of the pier now.
You can see the lighthouse, I’m just climbing up a few steps here, and then I’ll give
you a, a nice view of Lake Erie.
It’s, it’s big.
Here we go.
Are you ready?
So that’s a lake.
So the biggest body of water is an ocean or the sea, and I’m not really able to show
you that today because I don’t live close to the ocean or the sea, but eventually all
of the water from our rivers and lakes and streams makes its way to the ocean.
I’m sure some of you live close to an ocean.
If you do maybe mention it in the comments below that’d be really cool to hear if some
of you live close to the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean.
But anyways.
Bob the Canadian.
Learn English with Bob the Canadian.
Thanks for watching this video.
Don’t forget to click the subscribe button below and give me a thumbs up and share this
video with a friend if you know someone who’s learning English.
I think I’m just going to stay here for a little bit and enjoy the view.
It’s beautiful.
Sun’s coming down.
It’s hitting the water really nice.
And it’s just a nice day out by the lake.
It’s a little cold, but, it’s Canada.
See you next week.