Daily temperature records will tumble as sizzling early season heat from a summerlike heat dome sends thermometers skyrocketing into the triple digits in parts of California and the West this week.
The official start of summer is just a few weeks away, but it will feel like July in much of the West as temperatures climb 20 degrees or more above average, the highest temperatures of the year so far for many locations.
Excessive heat warnings are in effect for more than 17 million people in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona this week. The warnings are the most extreme form of heat alert issued by the National Weather Service and are used when widespread, dangerous heat is expected.
The soaring temperatures are being caused by a heat dome, a large area of high pressure that parks over an area, traps air and heats it with abundant sunshine for days or weeks. The resulting heat becomes more intense the longer a heat dome lasts.
I’m American but I grew up in Europe. When it comes to metric units I am absolutely in favor of meters, liters, grams, etc. since they make more sense than Imperial units and are easier to use in most situations.
But for temperature scales while Celsius is great for scientific measurements, Fahrenheit is better for describing the temperatures humans live at.
Celsius is just as good at describing temperatures humans experience. Every 5o is ‘category’:
< -10o Cripes it’s cold!
-10 to -5o Cold
-5 to 0o Snow/ice will melt
0o ‘true’ freezing/melting temperature
0 to 5o Cool
5 to 10o Brisk, jacket optional
10 to 15o Cool, Comfortable to work
15 to 20o Cold house
20 to 25o Typical house temps
25 to 30o Shorts recommended
30 to 35o Hot
35 to 40o Severely hot
'> 40o Crazy hot.
It’s simply just getting used to the values which you have to do with F too anyways, and IMO the C scale just makes far more sense. With F none of the values are intuitive and require you to learn them all.
Yes, but 69°F is a nice temperature
nice
Agreed. I tried to adjust to Celsius when I moved abroad from the US, and my biggest issue with it was actually in temperature control. I lived in a tiny studio apartment with an in-wall A/C unit, so I had really accurate, nearly instantaneous control of the room temperature except that often it would be too hot at one temperature setting but too cold if I reduced it by a single degree (Celsius). Had the system been in fahrenheit I would have had around three times as much sensitivity to control, which would have been perfect.
I’ve seen a few climate control systems that have options for both celsius and farenheit, but they never give more actual control in one system vs the other. One system I’ve seen adjusted by increments of 0.5 if you had it set to celsius, or increments of 1.0 when set to farenheit. Another adjusted by increments of 1 for celsius, or 2 for farenheit.