Oh! Hi, mermaid.
What are you looking at?
Hi, Katharine. Look at this picture.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Yes, but can you read the words?
Yes. "It's raining cats and dogs".
How funny.
Yes, but Katharine,
can cats and dogs really fall down
from the sky like rain?
Well, I don't think so.
But let's find out.
How do we do that?
Well, by investigating, of course.
I can't see any cats and dogs so far.
I think we need to take a closer look at our atmosphere.
What do you think?
Oh yes, I love that.
Look, this is how the air of our planet
looks above our heads.
Oh, I didn't know there were so many layers.
Indeed.
The layer closes to Earth is called the troposphere.
It's where we live
and it's where the rain and the snow falls.
Oh, interesting.
And what's next?
Well, next we have the stratosphere.
The stratosphere is very important because it's where the ozone is.
The ozone protects us from the harmful rays of the sun.
Oh, that is important.
Then we have the mesosphere, which is the coldest layer.
And here you can sometimes spot shooting stars.
Oh, beautiful.
Yes.
And after that is the thermosphere,
the layer where the shooting stars are formed.
And the last layer, the furthest, is the exosphere.
But Katharine, what is beyond the exosphere?
Beyond the exosphere,
outer space.
Well, that's great, Katharine,
but I still have one more question.
In which layer of the atmosphere
do the cats and dogs live that come down when it's raining.
Right, mermaid, that is a mystery.
But for every mystery
there is usually an explanation.
And in this case the explanation is easy.
"Raining cats and dogs" is just a figure of speech.
Oh, what's a figure of speech?
It's an expression to talk about the weather condition.
It's just a way of talking then.
That's right.
Raining cats and dogs is just a way to say
that it's raining a lot.
Oh, right.
And there are other creative expressions
we can use to talk about rain.
For example...
Well, what a relief to know
it never actually rains those things.
Yes. And when it rains a lot,
we can say "its pouring".
When it's pouring with rain
that can cause floods.
And when it's just raining a little bit,
we say there are "light showers".
We have a lot of ways
to talk about the rain in England because it rains quite often.
Well, thank you for all this information
about weather conditions, Katharine.
Specially, all the ways we can talk about rain.
And don't forget everything we've learnt
about the different layers of our atmosphere.
The troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere,
the thermosphere and the exosphere.
It's time to go now.
I want to get home safely
before it stars raining cats and dogs.
Or raining buckets.
Or spitting.
Bye everybody!
Bye!