Question
Describe a bad weather experience you have.
Sample answer
The experience I would like to talk about took place 4-5 years back and I was a college student at that time. One day I heard that my uncle is sick and my parents asked me to give him a visit. Since my college was closed at that time, I decided to go to my uncle's house. The journey towards my uncle's house took me 7-8 hours and I had to take a bus, then a boat and finally walk for 2 kilometers to reach the house.
The place was in a remote urban area and there was no direct bus or train communication there. However, the journey I took to reach there was enjoyable and I had good times at my uncle's house. I was glad to see him getting well and spent some quality time with my cousins. After 2-3 days I said goodbye to my uncle, aunt and cousins and took my journey toward my home. They were convincing me to stay few days more but I could not as my classes were due to start.
I left my uncle's house at 3:00 pm and the weather was cloudy. The weather was comparatively good even when I got on a big boat to reach the town to pick a bus. But after 30 minutes or so, the sky all of a sudden became intimidating. The lightening and the sound of it gave an impression that a heavy rain is approaching. But instead of rain a devastating storm hit in and the boat-men failed to control the navigation of the boat. People became so scared that they started praying to God. I was very frightened as well.
At a point I started feeling that the boat might sink and I might never reach home alive. The storm showed no signal to calm down and the powerful wind blowing was trying to take away everything from its way. The wind was blowing from every side and we could not see anything nearby or distant.
The boat-men yelled and asked us to hold something strongly and get prepared to swim to the nearby land if needed. I knew how to swim but I found 2-3 persons were crying as they did not know how to swim. Their screaming made the situation even worse and I felt a strong urge to stay alive. I am not sure how long this shattering storm lasted but to me it seemed for eternity. Later I found that, the strong lasted for about 40 minutes and the boat has reached to a completely different place. By the time the storm has pacified, we were grateful to be alive. We found 1 woman and a kid have become sick and were vomiting in fear and for the sudden impact of heavy storm. I reached to a highland and sat on a shop for about 15 minutes to realize what just happened. I have some other bad weather experience but no other one was a life threat as this one was.
After I reached home, I did not tell my parents about it. I told them the truth after 1 week. I will never forget the experience I had on this way back journey from my uncle's house.
Tips for answering this Cue Card Topic:
To describe a bad weather experience you need to talk about both the bad weather and your experience of this bad weather. A bad weather can be a heavy rain, show, storm, stormy wind, flood, heavy tide in a river etc. Do not talk about natural disaster like earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, accident in the road as they are not usually a bad weather. Note that you must describe how you got stuck in to this weather and what happened to you. Do not talk about about a bad weather experience you heard from someone as this cue card asks you to talk about your own experience. However you can say that because of the bad weather you were stuck at home and suffered a lot. But talking about a journey you took and faced a bad weather would be a better answer for this cue card topic.
Following are some of the ideas to help you talk about this cue card:
1. You took a journey and all of a sudden the bad weather appeared.
2. You did not have any option to quickly get to a safe place.
3. The weather so was devastating that it was life threatening.
4. You were stuck in this bad weather for more than 2-3 hours.
5. You were bit frightened and you found people were afraid as well.
6. When you left home, the weather was perfectly okay but all of a sudden it changed.
7. After the devastating experience ended you were so relieved.
8. This is an experience you will never forget.
