Yesterday, the official high temperature was 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Edison New Jersey. It got up to 108 in Newark New Jersey ( the closest relatively large city to our home in Edison ) and 104 in New York City ( where I work ). I never recalled being in weather hotter than 103 degrees before ( It turns out NYC did hit 104 degrees when I was 7, so I guess I had been in weather that hot, and it might have been hotter than 104 when I was hiking down the Grand Canyon in the Summer of 1985 with my Dad and brother ( We had to turn back less than halfway down because my brother ( who was 12 at the time ) started to turn purple from the heat. ) ), so I actually stepped out of my office building for a few minutes when I noticed that the NYC temperature had hit 104. I also occurred to me that NYC had hit the 40 Celsius mark, which is probably a lot more significant that 100 Fahrenheit in the rest of the world.
That got me thinking a bit about the relative merits of Fahrenheit and Celsius, and I've decided that when it comes to describing weather here on planet Earth, Fahrenheit is the far superior unit of temperature.
Now, before you pigeon-hole as an "ignorant American who won't accept the metric systems", give me a few moments to explain myself.
I've got nothing against the metric system. I spent my entire academic career studying science and engineering, and I wouldn't think of using anything other than metric units to do science. In fact, if I could snap my fingers right now and force the USA accept meters, liters, and grams, I'd do it in an instant ( Also, as long as I had those magical finger snapping powers, I'd also force the English-speaking world outside the USA to spell "liter" and "meter" the way they are pronounced. I mean really, "metre"? C'mon UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - you should know better than that. ). However, when it comes to describing weather, I think the USA may be the only nation that still does things the right way.
Let's face it, unlike meters, liters, and grams ( I just misspelled "grams" as "grahams" for the second time in this post. I must be getting hungry. ), scientist don't really use Celsius. No scientist or engineer would ever use Celsius when working with an equation like "PV = nRT" ( unless that scientist really got a kick out of adding 273.15 ). Kelvin is the temperature scale used for science, not Celsius. Sure, Celsius units are the same size as Kelvin units, and it's easier to convert from Celsius to Kelvin than from Fahrenheit to Kelvin, but in the end, neither Celsius or Fahrenheit work for science unless you do some conversions.
So, with that in mind, why is Celsius any better than Fahrenheit when it comes to describing weather? Gee, I guess it's nice that the freezing point of water in Celsius is 0, and the boiling point of water in Celsius is 100. But guess what ...
I'm not a fuckin' glass of water.
When it comes to describing the weather that any person might experience, 100 degrees Celsius is pretty much irrelevant. 100 degrees Fahrenheit, on the other hand, is pretty damned special, and I like it when special values are nice round numbers like 100. I also like it when things are scaled from 0 to 100. I guess that's why the inventor of Celsius used a scale from 0 to 100 to describe the freezing and boiling of water.
However, as I mentioned above, people are not water, and using the freezing and boiling point of water to scale your temperature systems seems rather arbitrary anyway. Why water? Why not use the freezing and boiling point of iron? Why not create a scale where the burning point of paper is set at 100 degrees and call those units Bradburys? Heck, this 0 to 100 thing doesn't even really work for water if you are not at sea level.
On the other hand, when it comes to describing the weather in a good portion of the world, the 0 to 100 scale in Fahrenheit almost perfectly describes the expected range of temperatures you might experience over your lifetime. At the latitude I live at ( and lots of major cities in the world are close to that latitude ), the temperature rarely gets above 100 Fahrenheit or below 0 Fahrenheit. The temperature only goes out of that range about once a decade, and when it does, it barely goes out of that range. I kinda like living in a 0-100 weather world, and I kinda feel bad for those who live in a world where the weather "ceiling" is only 40 and the weather "floor" is way below zero.
In any case, I guess it all depends on where you live and what you are used to, but for my little corner of the world, Fahrenheit is just right.
Rich
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