"IS THAT RAIN?' TALKING ABOUT RAIN IN ENGLISH

As a student of English, you must have realised that English native speakers love talking about the weather, particularly British people. In fact, the UK is so famous for having absolutely unpredictable weather, that it is reflected on how people use language to communicate on a daily basis.

Today, I have chosen some common expressions to use when talking about RAIN.

Obviously, the most basic sentence to use is “It’s raining.” However, if you want to sound more appropriate, you are expected to make use of more specific expressions, depending on whether you are referring to light rain or heavy rain.

You can say the two following sentences if you are talking about light rain:

1.It’s spitting.

2. It’s drizzling.

In turn, “It's only a shower” may be used if you want to say that it is going to stop raining soon.

The greatest number of expressions describe heavy rain:

1. It’s pouring (American or British English)
2. It’s pouring (with rain)
3. It’s bucketing down (= Informal British English)
4. It’s coming down in buckets.
5. It’s lashing down.
6. It’s raining pitchforks
7. It’s raining cats and dogs (an idiomatic expression, which is not used very often by British native speakers).
8. It’s pissing down = (according to the online Cambridge Dictionary, this expression sounds offensive)

Last but not least, If you are all wet, you may want to say: 

1. I’m soaked. 
2. I’m drenched.

For Portuguese speakers

Remember that when we talk about the weather in English, we use ‘it’. 'It’s raining' ( not "is raining’). “It's drizzling” in Portuguese means “está chuviscando/ está garoando”.

The expressions for heavy rain are equivalent to “está chovendo torrencialmente”, “está chovendo a cântaros”. Essa última, bem menos usada, atualmente, por brasileiros.