Weather & Seasons — Part 3
The Celpip Plus team
Written and reviewed against the official CELPIP scoring criteria
What you'll learn: the phrasal verbs English speakers use to describe weather that is changing — clouding over, clearing up, or rolling in — a category test-takers often skip in favour of single verbs, even though phrasal verbs are exactly what raters listen for as a sign of natural fluency.
Why weather is described in motion
Weather rarely stays still long enough to describe with a single adjective, so English relies heavily on phrasal verbs to capture the process of change: skies cloud over, storms blow over, rain lets up. These two- and three-word verbs are harder to memorize than single verbs, but they are exactly the vocabulary that makes a description feel like it's unfolding in real time rather than reporting a fixed state.
Pattern: particle signals direction
Most of these phrasal verbs follow a pattern worth noticing: "up" and "in" usually signal something intensifying or arriving (warm up, roll in, cloud over), while "down," "off," and "over" usually signal something fading or ending (cool down, die down, blow over, let up). Spotting this pattern helps you guess the meaning of new weather phrasal verbs you encounter in listening passages.
Word bank: weather phrasal verbs
| Collocation | Meaning | Example sentence |
|---|---|---|
| clear up | (weather) become fine after rain or cloud | The sky cleared up just before the picnic started. |
| cloud over | become covered with clouds | The sky clouded over quickly before the storm hit. |
| warm up | become warmer | Temperatures will warm up by the weekend. |
| cool down | become cooler | It always cools down after sunset in the desert. |
| die down | (wind or storm) become weaker | The wind died down by early evening. |
| set in | (weather or a season) begin and continue | Winter set in early this year. |
| let up | (rain) become lighter or stop | The rain finally let up after three hours. |
| roll in | (fog or a storm) arrive, often suddenly | Fog rolled in from the coast overnight. |
| blow over | (a storm) pass without causing serious damage | The storm blew over before it reached the city. |
| freeze over | become covered in ice | The lake freezes over every January. |
| dry out | become free of moisture | The soil dried out after weeks without rain. |
| brighten up | become sunnier or more pleasant | It should brighten up by the afternoon. |
Worked example — Speaking Task 1 (personal experience narration)
"We had planned an outdoor wedding, and the morning didn't look promising — the sky had clouded over by nine and fog had rolled in from the harbor. The forecaster warned that rain might set in for the whole afternoon. But around noon, the wind that had been pushing the clouds toward us suddenly died down, and within twenty minutes the sky cleared up completely. It felt like the whole storm system just blew over. By the time the ceremony started, everything had brightened up, and the ground had even started to dry out from the morning drizzle."
Common mistakes
- "Clear off" instead of clear up — "clear off" describes removing objects from a surface, not weather improving.
- "Cool off" used interchangeably with cool down for weather — "cool off" more often describes a person becoming less hot, not the temperature itself dropping.
- "Come in" instead of roll in for fog or storms — "roll in" is the fixed collocation that captures the slow, sweeping arrival.
- "Blow away" instead of blow over — "blow away" means something is physically carried off by wind, not that a storm has passed harmlessly.
Recap
Phrasal verbs let you narrate weather as a live, changing process rather than a static fact, which is exactly the vividness CELPIP raters reward. Practice by describing today's weather from morning to now using at least three phrasal verbs from the table in sequence.