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Like most Brits my age I understand both, as growing up they would appear side by side in newspaper forecasts and reports. TV has only used C as long as I can remember, though the weatherman would often translate it into F.
Nowadays Fahrenheit does tend to be restricted to air temperatures; everyone knows freezing is 32 but quite a few would struggle to remember what boiling is (212). Temperatures below 0F are so rare here that we struggle with them too; the American "10 below" I always thought meant 22F rather than -10. (Always "minus 10" in the UK, on either scale). Seeing some American forecasts I'm surprised how they get away with saying "lows down to the 30s", to me they should specify which side of 32 as thats important.
Seeing some American forecasts I'm surprised how they get away with saying "lows down to the 30s", to me they should specify which side of 32 as thats important.
Not really. I live in an area that gets kind of cold and bellow 32 is only important if there is water on the ground and even then just getting close to that number can be dangerous(i.e. water can freeze in the shade or when what ever it comes into contact with something is at freezing temperature say an car that is not running(i.e. no heat from the ground) or even the ground!.) What they will mention is an danger of freezing or of frost.
Where I live we can get hail in the middle of summer from an thunderstorm, freezing rain in November, early December and March, snow in late November, December, Febuary, March, and as late as April as well as frost of varying degrees from October till March.
All these freezing type weathers are not solely based on air temperature near the ground as it does not get bellow 32 until maybe October at night.(i.e. With freezing rain the rain falls as normal hits the ground and then freezes esp. in shady areas.). What 32 is good at predicting weather wise is if the snow on the ground has any chance of quickly melting.
Celsius.... I don't understand Fahrenheit. How in the world do you get 32 degrees at freezing?
Mr. Fahrenheit (whoever he was) picked 0 for a cold day in Poland, and 100 for a hot day. The freezing point happened to be 32% of the way up the scale.
That's about it, aside from some isolated places like Yellowstone WY, or Stanley ID, or Fraser CO, or parts of Adirondacks NY... you get the idea...
I wouldn't call it "many parts of the US," but it's still a decent amount of land area.
This map has been "smoothed out" to an unnecessary extent, but it gives you a general idea...
That's low temp not January average temp. Re read the post.
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