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, donât 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 youâre 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. Itâs 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 youâre doing something active outside. Some people start breaking out the shorts, but thatâs 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 youâre doing something rigorous outside, youâre probably sweating
- 80°F - 90°F: youâd probably rather be inside, if youâre not in a pool. Youâll 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 youâre going from like -15°C to 40°C. Itâs 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 youâre doing stuff in that context, it absolutely makes sense to use Celsius, where youâre working on a nice, neat 0°C-100°C range. But weather, the thing most people contextualize temperatures with, doesnât happen in that range. It starts well below freezing, and (hopefully) doesnât get anywhere close to the boiling point of water. For that, Iâd argue °F is actually a little more useful.
All these arguments donât really have any effect in reality. As someone born in Australia everyone is super comfortable with Celsius and the problems you describe just donât exist because in the end itâs really just what youâre used to.
To me Fahrenheit seems incredibly awkward but then I wasnât brought up using it.
Oh yeah I absolutely recognize that what youâre 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 - itâs more granular, has more resolution, is base 10 (for this application), etc.
Because it doesnât 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 âlearn to handle decimalsâ then the same argument can be given for inches vs mm.
