I would say “It’s bucketing down” … but as no one else here has mentioned it, I’m wondering if it’s a particularly antipodean expression 
I’ve heard “Mae’n pistyllio” for “It’s pouring” when it’s been raining hard
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My mum – in her 80s, comes from North Bucks – would regularly say this, as well as ‘teeming with rain’ and ‘coming down in torrents’. Nothing wrong with ‘bucketing down’ 
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I say bucketing down all the time. Have you heard mae hi’n diwel y glaw yn ddi-baid - pouring with rain non-stop at all - I’ve read that diwel y glaw is commonly used in the South, but not something I’ve come across yet.
There’s also the kid’s song Mae’n bwrw glaw yn sobor iawn, which I assume means chucking it down?-another expression I use all the time in English.
My mum (first language speaker) remembers Anglesey folk saying, of a woman, “mae honna yn mynd fel pioden” ( that one goes like a magpie). She knows it was something of an insult, but she can’t remember what the implication was.
Can anyone help with that?
PS in my reading of the Un Bore Mercher scripts, I have now found “mae’r hen wragedd a fflyn yn cael sbort i ni” (the old ladies and sticks are having sport with us) to describe a downpour.
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PS my mum and I have had a flash of inspiration between us. We think the magpie idiom means something along the lines of “hurrying away like a thief”.
Also, mum remembers peop!e saying “rhoi het yn y to” ( as opposed to ffidl) which is close to the English “hang up your hat”.
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Yes. Magpie can be a euphonism for someone that likes to nick anything left around especially shiny stuff.
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As a young boy in the 1950s, I lived in the Rhondda Valley. I seem to remember it tamped down there (“It’s tamping down”).
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It still is.
. Raining, that is, and the name for it.
Did anyone hear the word “Hemo” on the radio this morning, relating to the recent downpours? Not even the presenters were familiar with it, so they asked anyone in the know to give them a call.
I don’t know if it was resolved, but I noticed in the GPC dictionary that it means lashing, thrashing or beating (down). Apparently it’s derived from “Hem” for rivet.
Does anyone on the forum use the expression?
The one I’ve heard, or at least noticed, most often is “stido bwrw glaw”. I can’t remember for sure, but I think I’ve heard just “stido” on its own or possibly “stido bwrw” which would mean the same sort of thing.
Got to say, I’ve heard stido bwrw before, though I’ve not come across hemo. I’m afraid the one I hear most often is - apologies for vulgarity - piso bwrw. Must be the company I keep! 
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Oh yeah, I forgot about that one!