Fahrenheit

[jack]

For some reason, I never persuaded my brain to remember what temperatures in Fahrenheit meant, at all. I vaguely remembered 32 was freezing and 98 was body temperature, but never really absorbed how to extrapolate between them. Then I saw people quoting celsius reminders on siderea's post.

I especially liked "Cheat sheet: 0C=hat and mittens, 5C=coat, 10C=jacket, 15C=light sweater, 20C=short sleeves, 25C=sun hat, 30C=stillsuit"

And "30 is HOT, 20 is NICE; 10 is COLD, 0 is ICE".

So I decided to ask, what temperatures in F I should remember, and that 0, 10, 20 were probably the most useful. So 30 = freezing, 50 = cold, 70 = starting to get warm. And even if that's off by a couple of degrees, that lets me remember what's what in the comfortable range.

Comments

[kaberett]

The trick I've seen for Fahrenheit is consider the numbers as, loosely, a percentage of warm. 70% warm is warm! 30% warm sounds kind of chilly. And so on...

[jack]

Oh! Yeah, that's really helpful. I guess that was kind of how it was maybe supposed to be used, but I hadn't really thought about that.

[damerell]

10% warm doesn't sound so bad. :-P

(In practice - I grew up in Fahrenheit and am trying to break the habit - one often says "n below freezing" for temperatures below 32F, which makes them pretty obviously cold.)

[ptc24]

Farenheit fans like to say that it has handy "decades" - you know what a temperature in the 50s is. Maybe it just takes practise. Perhaps what you need is a thermometer, and every now and again, when you notice the weather and have a spare moment, guess the temperature (in F) and see if you were right.

The cheat sheet translates to:

32F - mittens
41F - coat
50F - jacket
59F - sweater
68F - short sleeves
77F - sun hat
86F - stillsuit

which suggests:

20s and below: special measures
30s: cold cold cold
40s: cold
50s: a bit chilly
60s: mild
70s: nice'n'warm
80s: hot
90s: special measures

Except that if we're talking about comfort, then maybe the best thing isn't temperature, but dew point, which neatly combines temperature and humidity into a nice figure. I mean, I don't think that people who have been to Singapore would really appreciate a stillsuit in the weather they have out there. Now stillsuit weather may be hot, but with a very low dew point...

[redbird]

Yes: I was in Juarez, Mexico briefly, saw a bank thermometer claiming 35°, and my first thought was "right, bank thermometers lie" and my second was "you're in the desert, of course it doesn't feel like 35 would in New York" and I ducked into the nearest shop and bought a cold drink. (It might have been 30 instead of 35, but it felt like 25.)

[I'm telling this in C because the thermometer was in C, and for everyone's convenience in not having to translate.]

a bit of usefull silliness

[redbird]

Those are close enough for most purposes (and 50 F is conveniently 10 C).

For tourists visiting New York City, I recommend getting a subway map (which is useful anyhow, and free). The 6/Lexington Avenue Local/green on the map line is your cheat sheet. 33rd Street for 0/freezing, and then add 5 degrees C for each stop north of there. It's a bit finer-grained than what you've got here, and again, not precise but close enough for deciding what to wear: you probably wouldn't change your decision on learning the temperature had gone up from 10 to 11, and the equivalences for 20 and 25 are precise.

(This is pure chance, to do with reasonable spacing of train stations and which the busy crosstown streets were a century ago.)