I actually used to make that same argument. “Celsius is better for science, but Fahrenheit is better for weather because 0-100 describe human experience.” But I decided to be scientific about this and test it. And to do that, I would need to learn Celsius intuitively. I’d have to spend some time with it. So I switched all my devices to Celsius, came up with a quick heuristic to do conversions until I got the sense of it, and started my experiment.

That was seven years ago. I’ve not gone back. I much prefer Celsius for weather.

I was already liking how much more meaning a degree has since they’re less granular than Fahrenheit, but then experiencing my first winter in Celsius solidified it for me. Having 0° mean freezing is so much more useful than I ever thought it would be. I was shocked by how much I appreciated 0° as freezing.

23°F doesn’t inherently mean anything to me. I know it’s below freezing. But -5°C means as much more cold than freezing as 5°C is warmer than freezing. I could figure that out for Fahrenheit, obviously, 23°F is as far below freezing as 41°F is above it. But it’s obvious with Celsius.

And once I spent a few months getting a real sense of the numbers I regularly experience in Michigan, I already had a good sense of what other numbers mean. People say, “100°F sounds hot,” and that’s true. But when one of my co-workers over in India told me it was 40°C where he was, I intuitively knew that was fucking hot. That sounded hot. It turns out, once you get to know the scale those senses come along.

Welcome to the New Normal™