The Weather

A topic that can be discussed with any even a stranger is the weather. What’s more, discussing the weather is very important when traveling, when you need to plan various activities for a short stay. At a minimum, you need to know what things to take with you on a trip, focusing on the weather.

Weather conditions

First, let’s mention that the word “tempo” is translated as “time” or “weather“. Some weather phenomena are described by their own verb:

chover (to rain), nevar (to snow), o sol brilha (the sun shines)

Further, if there is no suitable verb to describe the weather, then we use the verb “estar” (to be). We remind you that it describes a temporary state, and the weather can change rapidly.

estar vento (it’s windy), estar muito calor (it’s  very hot), estar húmido (it’s humid)

Also, if there is no particular weather event, you can describe the sky – “céu“:

o céu está limpo (the sky is clear), o céu tem poucas nuvens (there are few clouds in the sky), o céu está nublado (the sky is cloudy)

Season/month

Let’s remember how the seasons sound in Portuguese:

a primavera (spring), o verão (summer), o outono (autumn), o inverno (winter)

Let’s refresh our memory also for all the months of the year:

janeiro (January), fevereiro (February), março (March), abril (April), maio (May),

junho (June), julho (July), agosto (August), setembro (September),

outubro (October), novembro (November), dezembro (December)

Now let’s combine the knowledge from the first and second paragraph and make our first sentences about the weather.

Em Portugal, chove muito em março. (It rains a lot in March in Portugal.)

Em Coimbra no verão está muito calor. (It is very hot in Coimbra in summer.)

Note that there is no article before the name of the month in Portuguese, but there is one before the name of the season.  Moreover, it merges with the preposition “em” (in). If we want to clarify the weather on a certain day of the week, then we will need an article again.

Na quarta está vento. (Wednesday wind.)

No domingo o sol brilha. Vamos à praia. (The sun shines on Sunday. We go to the beach.)

This moment

If we want to be specific and indicate that something is happening with the weather right now, let’s remember the grammatical construction “estar verb + preposition a + infinitive of the main verb”:

Neste momento está a nevar. (At this moment it is snowing.)

Agora está a chover. (It’s raining now.)

Future

Speaking about the weather, we can give not general descriptions or descriptions in the present tense, but also give a forecast for the future. To do this, we need to know how the future tense is formed. It’s very simple! We just need to know how the irregular verb “ir” (to go) is conjugated, because by adding a semantic verb in the infinitive form to it, we get a future tense construction.

Amanha o ceu vai estar nublado. (Tomorrow the sky will be cloudy.)

A temperatura vai aumentar. (The temperature will rise.)

Also in Portuguese, expressions about future weather are often used, which begin with the words “Será que …?” This is a question-assumption, when both interlocutors do not know the answer to it. For example, “Será que vai chover?” (Will it rain?)

Past tense

In this section, we will not talk about ordinary past tenses. We will recall a grammatical construction that expresses a situation when an action began in the past and continues to this day. So, we take the desired form of conjugation of the verb “ter” (to have), and add the ending “-ado” (for verbs ending in “-ar“) and “-ido” (for verbs ending in “-er” and “- ir“. And we also need to use the word “desde” (since then) to indicate the same starting point in the past. Total we get:

Tem chovido desde ontem. (It has been raining since yesterday.)

Desde a semana passada a temperatura tem subido. (The temperature has been rising since last week.)

Desde as seis de manhã o Sol tem brilhado. (The sun has been shining since six in the morning.)

But we will touch on the ordinary past tense only in order to give you a verb that indicates the past period of time, and this is the verb “haver” (to be).

Há dois anos choveu muito no verão. (Two years ago it rained a lot in the summer.)

Há três dias tivemos trovoada. (We had a thunderstorm three days ago.)

Comparisons

No, we will not repeat the rules for compiling degrees of comparison. We will recall words such as tão (such) and tanto (many) and see their difference in the context of this topic. So, the word “tão” is used in combination with adjectives and adverbs:

O inverno passado foi tão frio. (Last winter was so cold.)

O verão passou tão rapido. (Summer went by so fast.)

The word “tanto” is used in combination with nouns and verbs:

Na primavera há tantas flores! (There are so many flowers in spring!)

No ano passado nevou tanto! (There was so much snow last year!)

The word “tanto” changes its ending depending on the gender and number of the noun.

We can also add the word “que” (that) to the sentence and continue it.

No verão está tão calor que não consigo trabalhar. (It’s so hot in summer that I can’t work.)

Quero descansar tanto que vejo a praia quando sonho (I want to relax so much that I see the beach in a dream.)

Conclusion

That’s how we started with simple vocabulary and ended with long sentences. Now you can understand the weather forecast on the radio or TV, or even make up your own. And if the weather is of little interest to you, then you can talk about it when you need to fill in the pauses in the conversation. Then you can limit yourself to at least these simple phrases from the examples.