It’s taught but not really for weather. So while I know the boiling and freezing points of various substances in Celsius, I don’t have instant recognition when I hear a Celsius temperature, I have to convert it in my head.
No need to convert? What do you mean? Are you saying if I just intrinsically knew Celsius for weather I wouldn’t have to convert Celsius? Because that’s obviously true, but I’m just explaining I don’t intrinsically know Celsius in that way.
Also, even if I did get to know Celsius really well, I would still have to convert it every time someone uses Fahrenheit, which is pretty much all the time in the US.
Lastly, what do you mean, saying 0 C is “dangerously cold” and suggesting that below that temp is outside of the bounds of what is used for weather? Where I live the temperature stays below 0 C for long periods of time, never going above it.
If you know those two numbers, 0 and 40, you can get a general idea of what the temperature is in Celsius without doing any math. If you hear 20, you know that’s a moderate temperature because it’s right in between. If you hear 30, you know that’s fairly warm. If you hear 10, you know that’s chilly but not freezing. Below 0 or above 40 are extreme cold and extreme heat, respectively.
Because for weather, °F is arguably better. 0°F - 100°F is the general range that most weather on the planet happens at (yes I know there are extremes where it gets to like -30°F or 120°F, but bear* with me). You can then further break those up into 10°F segments that are a bit more practical and granular than 10°C segments:
under 0°F: stay inside
0°F - 10°F: really fucking cold, don’t stay out too long or you risk hypothermia
10°F - 20°F: still really cold, but you can stay out long enough to shovel your driveway without fear of losing fingers/toes, if you’re wearing winter gear
20°F - 30°F: cold but not bitterly so. Perfect weather for outdoor winter activities like sledding or snowball fights
30°F - 40°F: Snow starts melting here, and you can probably ditch the scarf, but you still need a winter jacket
40°F - 50°F: Too warm for your heavy winter jacket, to cold for your light spring jacket. It’s layering season baybee
50°F - 60°F: still layering season, but you can probably get by with just a light jacket at this point, especially if you’re doing something active outside. Some people start breaking out the shorts, but that’s not the norm.
60°F - 70°F: a more generally acceptable range to start wearing shorts and short sleeves. Perfect temps for doing yard work and sipping beers on the patio alike
70°F - 80°F: definitely shorts weather, and pools start coming into play. If you’re doing something rigorous outside, you’re probably sweating
80°F - 90°F: you’d probably rather be inside, if you’re not in a pool. You’ll be sweating just lounging in your deck chair.
90°F - 100°F: hot as balls, probably not worth going outside for very long, as the pool water feels like taking a dip in lukewarm soup
Over 100°F: stay inside
Now I know you can do something similar with °C, but the workable range there is smaller, because you’re going from like -15°C to 40°C. It’s less granular, and the start/stop temps are more awkward.
Is it weird that water freezes at 32°F and boils at 212°F? Sure, absolutely. When you’re doing stuff in that context, it absolutely makes sense to use Celsius, where you’re working on a nice, neat 0°C-100°C range. But weather, the thing most people contextualize temperatures with, doesn’t happen in that range. It starts well below freezing, and (hopefully) doesn’t get anywhere close to the boiling point of water. For that, I’d argue °F is actually a little more useful.
All these arguments don’t really have any effect in reality. As someone born in Australia everyone is super comfortable with Celsius and the problems you describe just don’t exist because in the end it’s really just what you’re used to.
To me Fahrenheit seems incredibly awkward but then I wasn’t brought up using it.
Oh yeah I absolutely recognize that what you’re used to or brought up on is gonna have a huge impact on which system you prefer. That being said, I think a Fahrenheit user would have a harder time switching to Celsius, than a Celsius user would switching to Fahrenheit, at least for normal day-to-day weather applications. And for some of the same reasons that people prefer metric units in general - it’s more granular, has more resolution, is base 10 (for this application), etc.
Because it doesn’t have as much resolution as Fahrenheit.
There are 180 degrees between freezing water and boiling water in °F. But 100 degrees between the two in °C. So with Fahrenheit we can give mote accurate temperature info without resorting to decimal degrees. And if your response is “learn to handle decimals” then the same argument can be given for inches vs mm.
Is piped working for anyone else? I started using it about a month ago after seeing it here and loved it, but it hasnt worked for a couple weeks now so I moved to invidious. Maybe YouTube did something?
Loss of precision. Most digital thermostats only display two digits for cost savings. I’ve had experiences with mini-splits that are too cold at 27 and too hot at 28.
I got downvoted to hell for expressing this opinion on reddit. Like, I know metric and US customary. I use both everyday at work. But Celsius sucks for weather and I will die on this dumb hill.
You’d think after a decade or so somebody would figure out some system better than upvotes and downvotes that don’t mean what everyone assumes they mean. How about a tooltip to explain?
Even adding a separate 5-star agreement scale next to the up/down arrows would help so I could like upvote for a good contribution and give one star to say I disagree.
lemmy.ml
Oldest