It's snowing right now.

[conuly]

Not much of a surprise, given that its been a pretty snowy winter so far. My mother once worked with somebody who didn't believe in the null subject. Literally, she would edit sentences like "it's snowing" to say "snow is coming down from the sky" and the like. My mother would then quietly re-edit, because it wasn't worth the fight.

So my mother was calling up the stairs to me, and I responded "it's started coming down, you'd better get going", and that got me thinking. What is coming down? Obviously snow, look out the window. Okay, that's pretty straightforwardly null, right? But without any context I might have meant any form of precipitation, right?

Except that as soon as I thought that, it occurred to me that really, I couldn't. I would never say "it's really coming down" and mean hail or sleet or freezing rain or snowmelt from the roofs or frogs or cats and dogs or meteorites or slime or anything else that might conceivably fall down from the sky (or up above, anyway) in great numbers. My options here are fairly limited to snow and rain, and maybe a godawful conglomeration of the two that somehow isn't freezing rain. But maybe I'm overthinking this. Maybe I would use it that way, I just haven't? Quick, I want your gut opinion. Could you, when speaking English, use the phrase "it's coming down out there" or any variations thereof for anything besides snow or rain?

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I'd use it for just about anything that we already knew about or that we were expecting. I mean, when you already have a specific non-null antecdent for 'it'. I wouldn't use 'really coming down' with the null.

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what houseboatonstyx said.

[redbird]

I would use it for freezing rain, certainly: the behavior is similar to non-freezing rain until it hits. For hail or sleet, probably, especially if we already knew that was expected, and I might say "it's really coming down," thinking "it" was rain, when it was actually all or part sleet. Not, i think, for the frogs or snowmelt or such. (The frogs, even if expected, would almost certainly get "they.")

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I think I'd apply it to almost any sort of non-countable falling weather-substance, whether identified or not. "Better get the washing in, it's really coming down," followed perhaps by "ooh, that's hail!"
Frogs, being countable, would get "they".

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Yah, hail is 'it', hailstones are 'they'.

"It's raining like hail out there!" is the null being used in Deep South profanity.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

For hail, maybe; the kind of hail the Tornado Belt gets. When it comes down, it really comes down, like it was poured out of a celestial dump-truck, rattlecrash! But a hailstorm doesn't last long, and when hail is really coming down, nobody has to be told, because everyone can hear it.

Therefore I think you are correct; that one only says "It's really coming down out there" without defining 'it' when 'it' is the usual precipitation of the season. In February in NYC, snow seems most usual. Here, if one said it, rain would be presumed, because snow is not usual.

And speaking of which, here go I to the post office to mail yer snow-boots, so keep an eye out for 'em!