Journal – 1, 11/01/2025. A walk with Julie

B2 version:
Words: 182
Characters: 962

C1 version:
Words: 180
Characters: 988
Speaking Time: 1 min

Time spent completing tasks: About 1.5 hours, including writing this post

B2 Version:
There was a thunderstorm last night. Julie was scared of the thunder, which is a bit surprising because during the war, she wasn’t afraid of sirens or explosions. Honestly, thunder sounds a lot like an explosion.

Today, I took my dog Julie for a walk in the fields. After the rain, the ground is usually very wet and sticky, but today it wasn’t too bad. We could walk without much trouble. Normally, people don’t like walking in the fields after rain, but surprisingly, we saw a lot of cars driving around. The cars were moving, not parked, and that made me a bit worried because they could be dangerous for Julie.

Later, we came across some piles of dirt that moles had dug up. On our way back, Julie started digging in one of them and got really into it—she didn’t even want to leave! By the time we got home, her paws and face were covered in dirt. We didn’t give her a full bath, but we had to work hard to clean her up properly, especially her paws and face.

C1 Version (Conversational):
There was a thunderstorm last night, and Julie seemed really scared of the thunder. It’s a bit surprising because, during the war, she didn’t react to sirens or explosions, even though thunder sounds a lot like an explosion.

This morning, I took Julie for a walk in the fields. After the rain, the ground is usually very muddy and sticky, but today it wasn’t too bad—we could walk without any problems. Normally, people avoid walking in the fields after rain, but to my surprise, there were lots of cars driving around. The moving cars made me nervous because they could be dangerous for Julie.

Later, we came across some molehills scattered around the field. On our way back, Julie got really into digging in one of them. She was so focused she didn’t even want to leave! By the time we got home, her paws and face were covered in dirt. We didn’t give her a full bath, but we still had to spend quite a bit of time cleaning her up, especially her paws and face.

Vocabulary:

paws and face - лапы и морда
mole - крот
molehills
piles of dirt - кучи грязи

Storm - an extreme weather condition with very strong wind, heavy rain, and often thunder and lightning
thunder - гром
lightning - молния

storm, rainstorm, thunderstorm, rain shower (Scott Hanson)

Not all storms are the same. And no… not all have thunder. And not even all that do have some thunder are thunderstorms.

During the later afternoons on a summer day we can have heavy catered clouds that drop isolated rain showers. We don't call these storms. Though the clouds producing these rain shows can develop into storms.

There may even be an occasional lightning bolt with an associate's thunder clap, but these are not thunderstorms. They're just rain showers.

The sky may get completely overcast and there may be large heavy clouds and a whole lot of rain coming down with strong winds. This is a storm, or a rainstorm. And even with an occasional thunder and lightning, it still isn't a thunderstorm.

If there is a lot of strong winds with little rain, it's a windstorm.

When there is a whole LOT of lightning bolts and lots of nearly continuous thunder, and mother nature is putting on a massive display of power…. THAT is a thunderstorm.

The words used are descriptive in nature and there is plenty of subjective overlap. There is not objective definitive difference.

Basically thunderstorms are a massive displays of powerful lightning. Not just any storm that has an occasional bolt or two.

A lot of people assume there are definitive and distinct differences because of two different descriptive names for something. With native English speakers, often whether we use one or another is a matter of degrees of differences and how we were brought up to call something, not any particular defining difference.