Is combining the two prayers in the rain formal or actual?

The questioner : Our Shaykh, if you would be so kind as to listen to us, we would like to hear from some scholars an answer to many questions directed to these scholars regarding combining prayers in the rain and cold. We would like to hear from some scholars that there is no combining of the combining that you are doing, which is advancing Zuhr to 'Asr, but there is a formal combining, so we want to know if there is in the Sunnah the combining that people are doing by advancing it, the manner of combining, and a response to the people who refuse combining. Some of them mock you when you ask them this question, saying there is no combining. Especially, our Shaykh, since people need combining, particularly since houses may be far away or close, and the rain is heavy, for example. Perhaps we will be reviving this Sunnah this year and taking the reward that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) spoke of: May Allah reward you with good?

The Shaykh : I want to clarify to those who say there is no combining except the formal combining!

The questioner : In the rain.

The Shaykh : Yes, but in travel?

The questioner : In travel, they acknowledge it, our Shaykh.

The Shaykh : What is the evidence for that?

The questioner : I have not heard from them any evidence.

The Shaykh : So, no evidence.

The questioner : But I would have liked to postpone the question, meaning.

The Shaykh : First, the formal combining is not held by any of the four schools of the people of the Sunnah and the community except the Hanafis, and they do not limit this combining to staying in a place; rather, they say that combining in travel is formal and not actual. They explicitly state that actual combining does not exist except in two places: at 'Arafah, combining Zuhr and 'Asr by advancing them, and at Muzdalifah, combining Maghrib and 'Isha' also by advancing them. Any other combining in travel is, in their view, formal. Why do they hold to the formal combining? Because the reality is that there are many hadiths, which are almost mass-transmitted if not actually mass-transmitted, in which the Messenger combined between Zuhr and 'Asr and combined between Maghrib and 'Isha'. So they tried to reconcile these hadiths of combining with the texts that obligate the Muslim to perform every prayer in its time, as Allah the Exalted said:

The questioner : Guard

The Shaykh: Yes.

The questioner : .

The Shaykh : at a fixed time. So they tried to reconcile this text and what is similar to it with these hadiths that speak of combining. They interpreted the combining as the formal combining, because in this case, the Muslim who delays, for example, the Zuhr prayer until just before the time of 'Asr, does not take the Zuhr prayer out of its time.