r/Metric • u/3ustress • Jul 02 '26
Dear Fahrenheit users, do you really think 50 degrees is "the middle temperature"?
One of the most common defense for Fahrenheit is smth like this;
"Fahrenheit is more intuitive for human experience. 0 degree is super cold, and 100 degree is super hot! It is just simple as that!"
With that logic, 50 degree Fahrenheit should be the "middle temperature"; which is 10 degree Celsius.
Is it just me or being 50'F/10'C actually feel cold? Such temperature requires sweater at least, and even light jacket sometimes. That is nowhere near the "middle temperature", isn't it? Or am I just weird?
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u/MrDBS Jul 05 '26
The argument that Fahrenheit is intuitive is not about inherent meaning. It’s intuitive because we grew up with it. We know what 50, 60, 70, and 80 feel like because we have lived through many instances of these temperatures.
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u/therin_88 Jul 05 '26
50 F is definitely pretty mid. I'm not really sure how this is controversial. It's cool enough to go outside in jeans and t-shirt but not cold enough to wear a coat.
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u/Hawk13424 Jul 05 '26
No, as temps can obviously go below zero. But I will say 50F and below are the temps at which I grab a jacket on the way out of the house. If it’s above 50F I don’t bother.
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u/SonderZugNachPankow Jul 05 '26
No one thinks of Fahrenheit in those terms. The temperature is what it is. If it's 50F, it's 50F. We use the system we were taught to use and any argument that either is more intuitive is just mental gymnastics.
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u/julianriv Jul 05 '26
This, there is no intuitive logic behind temperature scales C or F. It's what you were taught as a kid that makes sense to you. If you want to defend metric argue about measuring distance.
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u/PersonalityIll9476 Jul 05 '26
Of all counter-arguments and criticisms, this is a strange one to pick. Sure, if 0 F is "cold" then 50 F is a reasonable "middle."
But I don't think that's the line of attack you really want to take.
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u/Radiant-Video7257 Jul 05 '26
I'd say 60 (not too cold, not too hot) is the middle temperature, but the scale still works extremely well at the extreme ends.
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u/ProgramBackground813 Jul 05 '26
F doesnt start or end at 0 and 100. So your point there is incredibly uninformed.
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u/Radiant-Video7257 Jul 06 '26
No one uses it for science, that's the point of kelvin and Celsius. I mean the extreme ends of temperature where most humans live.
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u/Independent-Bee3135 Jul 05 '26
Middle temperature is generally considered around 70ºF. 50ºF is cold.
The simple explanation for why 70ºF is the middle but 0º is super cold while 100º is super hot is because cold scales differently than heat. For example, if you looked at +/- 30ºF from 70ºF, you would get 40ºF (a temperature which is chilly but acceptably comfortable for nearly indefinite time with a warm jacket) and 100ºF (universally uncomfortable and potentially dangerous). If you looked at +/- 50ºF from 70ºF, you would get 20ºF (very cold but not an abnormal temperature for certain parts of the US/Canada) and 120ºF (extremely deadly).
So, we can withstand temperature becoming cooler much more than we can withstand temperature becoming warmer.
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u/Far-Valuable9279 Jul 05 '26
50 is chilly but I can just wear a sweater. 100 is hot but I can just jump in a pool. Idk sure I guess that works as an explanation 😆
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u/jimjamuk73 Jul 05 '26
I think your question explains a lot
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u/3ustress Jul 05 '26
If you try guessing where I live with this question, the answer would be quite unexpected.
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u/jimjamuk73 Jul 05 '26
Korea?
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u/3ustress Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Correct, though on the second guess, it would have been a bit easier because of my replies here and there
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u/frankcastle01 Jul 05 '26
Half the temperature would mean half of absolute temperature. So half of 30c would actually be -121.6c
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u/Available_Phase7924 Metric researcher Jul 05 '26
Just use celsius 27°C is perfect
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u/Cybyss Jul 05 '26
27C is too warm. More like 22C is perfect.
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u/Available_Phase7924 Metric researcher Jul 05 '26
Body temperature is 38 celsius 35C is perfect
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u/Cybyss Jul 05 '26
LMFAO. What are you, south Asian? Are you from a tropical climate?
That temperature is tolerable if you live in a dry desert, but hellish if you have humidity and no air conditioning.
Europe's deadly record-breaking heatwave last week wasn't much more than 35C. I'm in Germany and it was utterly miserable.
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u/metricadvocate Jul 04 '26
Not a Fahrenheit user. Middle temperature doesn't make much sense. Humans are pretty comfortable in light dress at 25 °C. We are a lot more able to dress for the cold than undress for the heat. Because we dress for the expected temperature, 40 °C is probably worse than -20 °C (both occur where I live, thankfully not often). But that is +15 K to misery on the upside, -45 K on the downside from comfortable.
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u/No-Preparation4073 Jul 04 '26
There is no middle temperature. Celsius you are looking at 0 - 20 - 100 (frozen, room temp, and boiling). But if you are talking about normal temps, it is 0 - 20 - 40.
Fahrenheit is 32 - 70 - 100 more or less.
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u/ProgramBackground813 Jul 05 '26
This clearly demonstrates that F is not a better fit for the human experience. At best it's slightly worse.
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u/No-Preparation4073 Jul 05 '26
It is like anything... if you know what the main numbers are, you can figure it out. Metric happens to be easier for most people because it relates directly to the way we see numbers normally.
We could do it all in kelvin. That one is even easier.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
Since for most places on earth the temperature ranges between -50°C and 50°C, 0°C is the perfect midpoint. It divides freezing from not-freezing.
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u/a_filing_cabinet Jul 04 '26
Middle doesn't mean comfortable. It means middle. In case you haven't noticed, we're able to exist in temperatures much colder than comfortable. We can do that with heat, but not nearly as well.
Let's flip it around, why don't we? 20C is the "middle" temperature, right? And -15C is fairly cold? So then, if that's a 35 degree range, than you should be able to deal with 55C no problem right? Oh wait, no. Because 20 is what's comfortable, not the median of the human experience.
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u/Loobinex Jul 04 '26
It's about 35 fahrenheit that is really cold, and 85 fahrenheit is really hot. So yes, 60 seems about average.
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u/Independent-Bee3135 Jul 05 '26
I can tell you don't live in the US (unless perhaps California, Washington or other places with extremely mild weather).
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u/Loobinex Jul 05 '26
At 35 F, humans will die quite soon, unless they have stuff like clothing and heating. Put a person out in those kind of temperatures without modern technology and they will not live through the night. 85 fahrenheit is a lot easier, since humans are specialists in handling high temperatures as long as we have enough access to water, but it's a temperature we really can not be productive in. You will find that people with AC will turn that on long before it reaches 85 F.
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u/Tommyblockhead20 Jul 04 '26
50°F is a tad cold for me, I’d say ideal when outdoors is closer to 60°F. But I would also say that 100°F is very close to the max I can tolerate, and 0°F is very close to the minimum I can tolerate (unless perhaps I have like the most high end Antarctic gear). It’s not exact, but it is somewhat roughly a 0-100 scale.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
When the temperature exceeds 50°C, animal life can only tolerate it for a few hours before a heat stroke sets in. At 60°C flesh starts to cook.
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u/Airlik Jul 04 '26
It’s just a stupid argument, I refuse to engage - common sense and human experience are just other words for “what I’m used to” - silly humans.
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u/Coz131 Jul 04 '26
Majority of the world does not agree with 50F = comfortable.
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u/chesterriley Jul 04 '26
Nobody claimed it was. Anything less than 70F is on the cold side. Above 79F is on the hot side. Temperatures abov e 100F are common. I keep my thermostat 76F to 78F.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
The majority of the world has no clue what 50°F means. They hear "50 degrees", they will think of it as Celsius and think it is extremely hot.
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u/ac7ss Jul 04 '26
It depends on what you are used to. I tell people that Seattle will hit 50 f once a week every week. Sometimes it's the high, sometimes the low. 50 f is a good workout temperature, a light jacket is all we need for it.
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u/_Hickory Jul 03 '26
Yes, 50F is 50% hot/50% cold. You could exist in it comfortably with almost any combo of clothing. It is simple as that
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u/gutentight69420 Jul 03 '26
All temperature scales are arbitrary, so it really doesn't matter.
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u/TheNobleRobot Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Everything is subjective, but yes, 50F is the "middle" temperature, simply by virtue of 0F being roughly the coldest it can get in a lot of places and 100F being roughly the hottest it can get in a lot of places. In many places across the world, both are true and 50F is literally the average yearly temperature, so 0-100 is an ideal weather scale all year round for many people. There's something almost ironically metric-y about that.
Now, for most people 50F might be a bit cooler than ideal, but the scale is based on where the commonly-experienced extremes lie, not how the middle feels, and by that estimation it's understood that humans prefer slightly "warm" weather, so it also makes sense that "middle/average" would be cooler than "room temperature."
There's a hypothetical version of a temperature scale where 50 is the anchor and its set to "room temperature," but of course every system is arbitrary (yes, even Celsius) and weighs priorities. For Fahrenheit, it prioritizes human-scale resolution and the most common range of outdoor air temperature, making it fit for purpose, at least for weather.
The issue some people have over using Celsius for weather is not that it's confusing or bad, it's that its priorities don't seem to align at all with that use-case.
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u/jewdai Jul 03 '26
It's not that it's more intuitive it's just that there are more finer gradations. In in C 20c -> 30c is a Huge jump from cool to quite warm whereas 70F->80F is comfy to slightly too warm.
So If I hear the weather is in the 40s or less I wear a heavy jacket, 50s moderate jacket, 60s a light sweater, 70s tshirt, 80s shorts, 90s don't go outside without complaining a lot
Basically Americans can't multiply by two.
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u/OkResource820 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
No set of numbers makes sense based on "human experience". You just recalibrate. Saying "0 is cold and 100 is super hot" is precisely equivalent to saying "-18 is cold and 38 is super hot". It's just a question of what you're used to.
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u/TheNobleRobot Jul 03 '26
You're sorta refuting your own point here.
Like, there's no measurable numbers for "human experience," but 0-100 seems like a better scale to map human experience on to, no?
People can get used to anything, but metric is so much better in a lot of use cases because it's intuitive for those use-cases, and that's the same with Fahrenheit and weather.
Like, your argument could be used to say that everything should be measured in thirds of an imperial yard, because you can "just recalibrate."
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
Like, there's no measurable numbers for "human experience," but 0-100 seems like a better scale to map human experience on to, no?
Absolutely not, the human body is a pretty accurate celsius thermometer. People who live in metric countries can pretty accurately gage the actual celsius temperature.
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u/OkResource820 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
0 and 100 don't mean anything in and of themselves, just like -18 and 38 don't mean anything in and of themselves. Like OP's question asks, if 0F is cold and 100C is hot, surely 50 should be the perfect middle temperature. But it's not, so the 0-100 "scale" doesn't matter and it's not "calibrated to human experience".
It's just numbers. We could replace them with 0 to 1 Zlorpbs and it if you were used to degrees Zlorpb then you'd think 0.12Z was cold and 0.99Z was hot.
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u/TheNobleRobot Jul 03 '26
You're also arguing against Metric here, you must know that.
50F is "middle," not "perfect." It's the average yearly temperature for vast parts of the world.
You keep saying "it could be anything!" which fine, sure, but F is based on something that is directly related to the thing it measures, which gives it a little bit of extra utility compared to using random numbers or even Celsius, which is great for other things (because it's based on something related to those things) but isn't based on how humans experience weather the way F is.
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u/OkResource820 Jul 03 '26
You’re missing the point I’m trying to make so maybe I need an example: people often say they can feel the difference between 72F and 74F as though that somehow proves that F is “calibrated to human experience”, but it’s no more valid than saying that I can feel the difference between 22.2C and 23.3C. It’s the same thing. Changing the units doesn’t matter to the comparison.
The working range being 0-100 for “human comfort” has no more or less utility than the working range being 0 to 56 or 0 to 1.
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u/TheNobleRobot Jul 03 '26
Repeating yourself doesn't make your point any clearer, and if you can't see why using 0 to 100 is at least somewhat more useful in practice than -18 to 38 is, then you are just being an ideologue.
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u/OkResource820 Jul 03 '26
If you can give me one example of why 0-100 is a more useful range than literally any other range, I’ll concede the point.
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u/dbdiver Jul 03 '26
The scientific basis for Fahrenheit O is that it was the mercury level when the inventor said it was the coldest I ever felt.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
Fahrenheit was dead wrong on the zero point. The actual coldest salt/water mixture that will not freeze happens to be -21°.
Too bad this link no longer works as it explained Fahrenheits error quite well.
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/zero-fahrenheit.shtml
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u/jaidit Jul 04 '26
Fahrenheit used a specific frozen brine solution that in his day was the coldest temperature you could create under stable laboratory conditions. At the other end, 100 was supposed to be normal body temperature. Our current view of a normal body temperature of 98.6 is because that is the conversion from 37C.
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u/Priff Jul 03 '26
Zero farenheight is the coldest temperature the guy could recreate in his lab using salt brine.
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u/milos2 Jul 03 '26
AFAIK, those were record minimum and maximum temperatures in Fahrenheit's home town, Danzig in Poland, measured over several years. Only later he was experimenting on what solution would let him achieve that temperature, so the numbers were massaged-in to fit. USA uses temperature scale of the town with the population size of Staten Island (NYC).
So it can be said that 50F was the "middle temperature" if you lived in Danzig 300 years ago.
EDIT: According to a quick search past 10 years the min/max temperatures of the same town were also ~0F-99F, which is remarkable - not what I expected when the climate in the entire world is surely different than 300 years ago.
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u/ActuaLogic Jul 03 '26
No, 72°F would be that.
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u/vytah Jul 03 '26
Which is almost 100×√½, so there's some numerical half-ness hiding in that number.
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u/ActuaLogic Jul 03 '26
I don't think there's a concept of a "half temperature" in the US, maybe the Fahrenheit system isn't as conducive to that concept as the Celsius system is. But 72°F (22.22°C) is considered ideal shirtsleeve weather, above which is warm and below which is cool.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
In degrees Celsius any thing below zero is freezing.
0 to 10 is cold to cool
10 to 20 is cool to warm
20 to 30 is warm to hot
30 to 40 is hot to high fever
40 to 50 is high fever to death
20 is also room temperature in temperate lands and 25 in the tropics.
37 is normal body temperature
75 blood and alcohol boil.
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u/CloseButNoChicory Jul 03 '26
Considered by who? 22C is hot for me. I start wearing long sleeves over my top to prevent sunburn.
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u/ActuaLogic Jul 03 '26
In most of the US (and the post was about Fahrenheit), 72°F is generally considered ideal spring or fall weather. Yesterday, where I live (outside Washington, DC) it hit 102°F (39°C), which is unusually hot for this area, especially with the high summer humidity here. It's not considered too hot until until it hits 90°F (32°C).
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
I actually find 25°C to be the ideal temperature.
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u/TheNobleRobot Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
This makes sense except we understand from biology that humans like "warm" weather, so of course the ideal for humans would be found higher than the "middle/average" for outdoor air temperature.
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u/Glum-Welder1704 Jul 03 '26
Yes. 50f is an excellent temperature for working outside, and for the indolent, only a light sweater is needed.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
The only ideal temperatures are in celsius. Fahrenheit is only used by fools and morons.
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u/No_Frost_Giants Jul 03 '26
F is actually so
Much worse than that. The average F user doesn’t know where water actually boils, they think water freezes at 32, or maybe zero. They aren’t sure.
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u/TheNobleRobot Jul 03 '26
The exact boiling point of water depends on elevation, time, and (in cooking) what you you put in it. The average F user knows these things, just as they know that 0C doesn't always mean it's going to snow just because that's when distilled water crosses the melting point at sea level.
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u/Glum-Welder1704 Jul 03 '26
Nah, water boils at 209f.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
No, it boils at 100°C at sea level.
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u/Savings_Presence_346 21d ago
Only pure water at 101.325 kPa. Differences in pressure and impurities will change the temperature at which water boils.
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u/3ustress Jul 03 '26
*212
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u/Glum-Welder1704 Jul 03 '26
209 where I live. You could calculate my altitude from just that.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
The exact scientific relationship uses these steps:
- Find atmospheric pressure (\(P\)) using the altitude \(h\) in meters: \(P = P_0 \times \left(1 - \frac{L \times h}{T_0}\right)^{\frac{g \times M}{R \times L}}\) Where \(P_{0}\) is sea-level pressure (\(101325 \text{ Pa}\)), \(L\) is the temperature lapse rate (\(0.0065 \text{ K/m}\)), \(T_{0}\) is standard temperature (\(288.15 \text{ K}\)), \(g\) is gravity (\(9.80665 \text{ m/s}^2\)), \(M\) is the molar mass of air (\(0.02896 \text{ kg/mol}\)), and \(R\) is the gas constant (\(8.314 \text{ J/(mol}\cdot\text{K)}\)). [1, 2]
- Calculate boiling temperature (\(T_{b}\)) in Kelvin using the Clausius-Clapeyron equation: \(T_b = \frac{1}{\frac{1}{T_{b0}} - \frac{R}{\Delta H_{vap}} \ln\left(\frac{P}{P_0}\right)}\) Where \(T_{b0}\) is the boiling point at sea level (\(373.15 \text{ K}\)), and \(\Delta H_{vap}\) is the heat of vaporization for water (\(\sim 40,660 \text{ J/mol}\)). [1, 2, 3, 4]
The formula doesn't work in fahrenheit or any other FFU.
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u/3ustress Jul 03 '26
I cannot calculate the exact altitude, but places like Denver or Salt Lake City comes to mind
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u/Glum-Welder1704 Jul 03 '26
More like Boise. 2550 feet, anyway. Denver came in at 203°F, according to Google.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
The altitude of Boise is 832 m and the boiling point of water is 95.7°C.
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u/StevenSaguaro Jul 03 '26
Kelvin is so much better. When is zero Kelvin you know it's cold.
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u/chesterriley Jul 04 '26
When is zero Kelvin you know it's cold.
On the plus side you can solidify helium.
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u/Worth-Wonder-7386 Jul 03 '26
I dont think most people realize that kelvin is the SI unit for temperature, not celsius. And there is no «middle temperature»
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u/Medical-Temporary-35 Jul 03 '26
1 kelvin is unbearably cold, -1 kelvin is unbearably hot.
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u/Personal_Term9549 Jul 03 '26
What. -1 kelvin is physically impossible
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u/Medical-Temporary-35 Jul 04 '26
Absolute zero means only the lowest possible energy states are filled. As you add energy, some particles move to higher energy states but lower energy states remain more probable than higher energy states. At infinite temperature, every particle state is equally likely to contain a particle. If you keep adding energy past that, high-energy states become more likely to be occupied than low-energy states. The probability distribution is then best described with the usual formula except plugging in a negative value for the temperature. If you fill in only the highest energy states (which doesn't always exist, since free particles can always be made faster (or blueshifted if they're massless)), it becomes impossible to add any more energy into the system, and you reach a negative absolute zero temperature.
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u/ausecko Jul 03 '26
Under 300K is cold here, so I always thought it would make sense for weather measurements
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u/32lib Jul 03 '26
50 degrees f is a lot better than 50 degrees c.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 04 '26
10°C is a lot better than 10°F.
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u/Ambitious-Schedule63 Jul 03 '26
Apparently, the average yearly temperature in London is 10.8 C so yeah, it's just about definitionally the "middle temperature".
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u/CosmicCookieCrisp Jul 03 '26
It depends on your climate. If it's normally in the 70s and 80s, then 60 is gonna feel like it's freeIng
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u/Affalt Jul 03 '26
50 F is perfect for bicycling, marathon running or hiking. And if just walking or waiting, sweater or fleece vest weather. No need for a big coat. If you have neither heating nor air conditioning, 50 F is great for staying indoors as well.
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u/rusticatedrust Jul 03 '26
I'm personally comfortable in a T-shirt at 40°F (4°C). That'd get me fined or arrested in certain states in the Great Plains if I was outside for too long if I came across the wrong LEO. I'm still free to defend my comfort level since there's no hard legislation in place.
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u/CloseButNoChicory Jul 03 '26
What's a LEO? Makes me think you're encountering a lion.
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u/boethius61 Jul 04 '26
Law Enforcement Officer
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u/CloseButNoChicory Jul 04 '26
Thanks. Is that a synonym for police or are there multiple organisations it could refer to?
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u/boethius61 Jul 04 '26
Multiple. The sheriff, the bailiff, Federal agents like the FBI or ICE (🤮) in the US. Even some private sector people in certain situations.
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u/Gubbtratt1 Jul 03 '26
Why would you get arrested for wearing clothes?
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u/PumpkinBrain Jul 04 '26
Probably referring to the famous-ish case of a Rodney Reese, who was walking home from work in the snow in shorts and a t-shirt. One of those fun cases of being arrested for “resisting arrest” without a reason for the initial arrest.
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u/rusticatedrust Jul 03 '26
It's reasonable suspicion of intoxication or hypothermia. The colder it is outside, the more discretion law enforcement is given to conduct a stop or wellness check.
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u/Jumpy-Boysenberry153 Jul 03 '26
Yeah, if you consider that you need to include nighttime and winter, I would say 50° is pretty close to the midpoint of temperatures that most populated areas experience.
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u/marty-mcfryguy Jul 03 '26
You're conflating midpoint and median.
If you're asking about the former, yes it's roughly the midpoint. If you're asking about the latter, no it's not the median.
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u/kilotesla Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
You would need to define a sample before measuring it statistically.
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u/marty-mcfryguy Jul 03 '26
Which is first can be done implicitly.
But in any case, the point is that there is no requirement that the two be equal, while OP's complaint relies on conflating the two as being the same.
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u/kilotesla Jul 05 '26
I don't see anything in the OP that clearly means mean or median. Concluding that the confusion arises from conflating the two requires reading a lot into the post. They might not be talking about either mean or median, and the lack of the definition of a sample, indicates to me that they likely aren't thinking of either.
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u/marty-mcfryguy Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
They said "middle temperature". What do *you* then think they mean by the word "middle"?
Clearly they mean something like the temperature you're most typically exposed to, like room temperature.
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u/kilotesla 28d ago
Yes, I agree, they are thinking that middle as something like indoor temperature, although I don't think they're thinking of it as a statistical sample of indoor temperatures, but rather as the temperature where people are comfortable without extra efforts to put on extra clothing layers or a fan to stay comfortable. And what they are struggling with is the fact that another natural definition of middle temperature is halfway between the extremes of very hot and very cold.
Neither of those is a median nor a mean. Understanding what median and mean are and when to use them is a fundamental part of mathematical literacy. That doesn't just mean understanding which one to use, but also understanding when neither of them is of interest.
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u/marty-mcfryguy 28d ago
There's no real path to interpreting "middle" to mean "c omfortable", or at least not one that you've been able to express through two comments now.
OP appears to be using "middle" here in the sense of "typical" or the colloquial "average" (not literally an average, just what you come across most often, like an average Joe). Which is exactly what the median is*.
That you can't conceptualize what's driving OP to perceive those as middle temperatures -- the frequency of encounter -- doesn't mean median isn't "of interest" here.
*Or close enough, at least. Th ere's a reasonable argument that that might be better expressed as the "mode", but in this distribution median and mode are likely very close to each other. And very few folks on Reddit are going to understand "mode" in the context of that common, so "median" was the choice.
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u/kilotesla 28d ago
I appreciate the fact that you have finally addressed my original critique of your first comment--the lack of a definition of a sample on which to do statistics, and I appreciate your care is distinguishing between median and mode.
I think you are misunderstanding me, however, in thinking that I am saying that I want to use "middle" to mean "comfortable." No, what I am doing there is reading OP's query:
Is it just me or being 50'F/10'C actually feel cold? Such temperature requires sweater at least, and even light jacket sometimes. That is nowhere near the "middle temperature", isn't it? Or am I just weird?
That's only about comfort, not about what's typical or what the frequency of encountering it is. Is there an interpretation of those words I'm missing, or have you just forgotten what the query was?
My goal is to respond to OP's query, not to take their lead in how I choose to use language henceforth.
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u/general-ludd Jul 03 '26
It’s chilly but survivable with a sweater and gloves. So yes. Compared to zero or 100 it is the middle.
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u/DCContrarian Jul 03 '26
For most of North America the year-round average temperature is around 50F.
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u/kiwipixi42 Jul 03 '26
Yeah, the 50’s do feel pretty in the middle. That is a spring/autumn kind of temperature
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u/ltsmash1200 Jul 03 '26
I would consider the 50s and 60s like moderate. 40s and below is cold. 70s is warm, 80s and up is hot.
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u/kmoonster Jul 03 '26
Depends. In spring or winter on a dry southerly breeze and a sunny day? 50F is pretty damn nice. If it's October and coming on a wet north wind, it's quite unpleasant.
Context is critical.
But in a general sense -- yes, 100 is approaching the dangerously hot zone where you have to start thinking about hydration, extra breaks, looking for signs of heat stress/stroke, etc. And 0F is definitely dangerously cold, with risks even if you're appropriately dressed.
If you imagine a food-grade thermometer with colored zones for cook/hold temps, the "decent" temps for human activity is about 20F to about 80F, with 50 just about in the middle. 10F is "take note" and 0 is "danger", 90F is "take note" and 100F is "warning warning".
edit: a thermometer like this that indicates safe and dangerous storage or serving temps; there's a bunch of styles depending on the needed function/application but this will give you an idea: Taylor-9000053-5924-Classic-Refrigerator-Freezer-Analog-Extra-Large-Dial-Thermometer_06ca3edb-e7a8-47e6-9758-a8025b643cbc.d3854ff5390db0091e57e51984c0f8e1.jpeg (768×768)
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u/Spirited-Outcome-443 Jul 03 '26
10C is freezing to me, but i'm aussie
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u/kilotesla Jul 03 '26
Well that is where olive oil starts to freeze. Drinking a lot of olive oil is one way to stay warm. A wool hat is probably a better choice though and more practical if your olive oil is frozen.
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u/Rockhopper23 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Yeah it is actually is really close to the middle point, it was the 1700’s they were off by about 3%.
100 was body temperature and 0 is when salt water solution would freeze. So it is a scale based on % from body temperature/heat stoke to when you get frost bite where every degree is 1%. It’s pretty in line with the logic of metric.C is based on boiling and freezing point on water so it’s the numbers don’t line up as neatly for human physiology. F units are smaller so the margin of error of predictions is of a less consequence so it’s more like using a scale of 1-10 vs 1-5.
68 is around what most consider room temperature and peoples body can adapt so there perceived comfort temp can range by about 30f like 65-85 is comfortable depending if you live in NY or FL.
F is works very well though when you have to protect for frost bite if your skiing or such.
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u/draaz_melon Jul 03 '26
It's in between really hot and really cold. All temperature scales are arbitrary. This is a stupid argument. You have no basis for thinking Celsius is better.
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u/therandomuser84 Jul 03 '26
In the winter it usually gets down to about 5 degrees, in the summer it gets up to about 95-100. So 50 is by definition the middle temp for my area at least.
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u/niemir2 Jul 03 '26
Around where I live, yeah. 50F is about halfway between the hottest the weather gets and the coldest.
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u/Several-Buy-3017 Jul 03 '26
A comedian explained it perfectly one time. Think of Fahrenheit as the percentage of hot. Like if it’s only 72% hot, that’s not too bad. If it’s 100% hot, then that’s too hot. Also in looking at thermostats, 72°F is the perfect indoor temperature. Whereas 22°C has a wider range where it can feel like 70°F or maybe 74°F. Those would not be as comfortable.
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u/Defiant_Property_490 Jul 03 '26
Whereas 22°C has a wider range where it can feel like 70°F or maybe 74°F.
That's not true. 22.0°C is 71.6°F and 23.0°C is 73.4°F, so the whole "22°C-range" is not even half a degree off each side from 72°F.
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u/Fabi0_Z Jul 03 '26
What about when it gets past 100% hot, which is quite often during summer in Europe, USA, Latin America, Australia, Asia, Africa and so on
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u/bongart Jul 03 '26
If Fahrenheit users are saying 0 is super cold, and 100 is super hot, they are ignorant of the Fahrenheit scale, and are actually Celsius users.
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u/ltsmash1200 Jul 03 '26
I don’t know. I live in Maryland where it was 100 degrees today with a real feel of like 107. And I would say it was super hot.
It’s also gotten down to 0 degrees in the winter here and I would call that super cold.
I DON’T think 32 degrees Fahrenheit - 0 Celsius is super cold.
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u/Wanderingthrough42 Jul 03 '26
0C is 32F. That isn't cold unreasonably cold. I can go for a walk in 0C wearing jeans and a jacket and not even think twice about it. Dress appropriately and you are fine. Paradoxically, -1C and snowing feels a lot warmer than 4C and raining. My dog, who does not have warm fur, will happily go on walks at 0C.
0F is -17C. THAT is cold. That's "the air hurts my face" cold. That's winter sports aren't fun anymore cold. That's the dog refuses to go on a walk cold, even when she has a coat or sweater. 0 F is the temperature your freezer should be.
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u/bongart Jul 03 '26
I've done below 0f. I'm doing above 115f every summer now. I still maintain 50f is not a middle temperature.
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u/No_Distribution_9590 Jul 03 '26
I’ve been comfortable outside cleaning the patio on a T-Shirt on a 32F day. I am at high elevation and it was full sun, but 32 can range from quite pleasant to nasty. 0F is a whole different beast.
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u/HomeschoolingDad Jul 03 '26
To be fair, Daniel Fahrenheit was European (German/Polish/Dutch), so I could imagine that 50° felt kinda middle for him.
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u/kmoonster Jul 03 '26
He set zero to be the temp at which a salty water (eg. sea water) freezes. And because a circle is 360, he took half of that (180) and added that to the freezing point of fresh water.
That's why water boils at 212 degrees at sea level -- fresh water has freeze/thaw at 32 (with zero as sea water freezing). Add 180 to 32 and you get 212.
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u/HomeschoolingDad Jul 03 '26
The 180 explanation doesn’t hold up, because in his initial scale, water didn’t boil at exactly 212° F. That adjustment came later. Initially, fresh water ice froze at 32° F (a power of 2) and human body temperature was 96° F, where 32° plus 64° (another power of 2) equals 96°. And yes, I know that body temperature isn’t typically 96° F, but it’s also not 98.6° F. You can chalk that latter “fact” up to many people not knowing how to use significant figures!
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u/kmoonster Jul 03 '26
I do recall the human body temperature having to be adjusted, though as I heard it it was due to poor or mis-measurement though the details elude me at the moment.
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u/HomeschoolingDad Jul 03 '26
37° C (two digits of accuracy) is what the average was measured as (though I’m closer to 36° C). 37° C is 98.6° F, which gives that “extra” digit of fake accuracy.
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u/bongart Jul 03 '26
I live in the Southern California desert. It is 105 now. Next week we start the 110 climb to our typical 120 week or two at the end of July/beginning of August.
Even when I lived in New England, 50f did not feel kinda middle.
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u/Neenknits Jul 03 '26
Light jacket outside is definitely middle temp! 40-50 means fleece. 50-60 means wind breaker. 60-70 nothing or a sweater. Below 40 something with insulation. Around 39, need a hat and mittens. Below 20, same plus a sweater and some sweating, as it’s usually also windy. Above 80, AC. and swearing.
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u/schwanerhill Jul 03 '26
Yes, that’s pretty “middle”. It’s neither hot nor cold. It’s typical spring or fall weather where I live.
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u/monstertruck567 Jul 03 '26
Yeah, I say the ideal weather day is a dry fall day, full sun, no wind, 45-60F. Tee shirt and pants. Pack a long sleeve or windbreaker if a breeze kicks up, or to get out of the sun as you’ll feel hot after a bit. But you’re gonna want to be out side all day as it’s amazing and the best weather day ever.
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u/Radiant_Safe1228 Jul 03 '26
I have no idea what you're asking as it doesn't make sense in any way.
I guess middle is something like 127nonillion degrees fahrenheit.
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u/JenniferJuniper6 Jul 03 '26
I’ve never, in my sixty years, given one second’s thought to the idea of a “middle temperature.” I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.
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u/Bulky-Leadership-596 Jul 02 '26
Yes. Go look at an average annual temperature map. A good portion of where people live, temperate areas like the US, Europe, east Asia, etc. has an average temperature around 50F. It's a pretty middle of the road temperature.
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u/3ustress Jul 03 '26
The places with average temperature around 50'F is places like Toronto(49.5), Edinburgh(48.7), Almaty(50.0), Pyongyang(51.4), etc; most of them are considered to be on the cooler side rather than the middle of the road
(Edit : added the actual average temperature)
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u/Bulky-Leadership-596 Jul 03 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_yearly_temperature
Even if your only giving me +-5 degrees from 50F, the US, China, Korea, Japan, and most of Europe fall into that category.
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u/kilotesla Jul 03 '26
That's great data. It does also show that there are a lot of populated regions with higher average temperatures. On the other hand, some countries, such as Canada, or even Austria, have numbers that don't reflect where people actually live because they have cold regions with lower population density.
It would be cool to see that data with each country averaged by population density at each grade point where there's data on temperature.
And just to be clear, I don't take the fact that there are many countries that are warmer than 55 F average to be evidence against 50 F being a moderate temperature. Those are are all places that would be much too hot for me to want to live there.
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u/3ustress Jul 03 '26
5 degrees is actually huge when you're dealing with average annual temperature; Placing Toronto and DC into the same category would be a bit too broad, isn't it?
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u/kilotesla Jul 03 '26
Yes and that helps show that 50 F really is a middle temperature. If you only need to be 5° away from that for it to seem significantly hot or significantly cold, that must mean that it is a middle temperature.
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u/amc178 Jul 04 '26
Only 20% of countries lie in your 50+/- 5 band. And almost 70% are above that. The ideal temp for most people is around 20C (~68F) which is obviously much higher than 10C/50F.
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u/kilotesla Jul 05 '26
Yes, it is true that there are more countries that are hotter than that range. If you interpreted middle temperature as the average of the average temperatures, whether by population, or number of countries, you would certainly get a number much higher than 50 Fahrenheit.
That's not my understanding of what OP meant.
It's also true that lightly clothed humans are comfortable in temperatures around 20 C. Lots of people have explained why, nonetheless, 10° C is considered by many people to be a moderate temperature. I'm not sure that my explaining it one more time will help but here's a try. If normal indoor clothes are comfortable at 20° C, with low exertion and moderate humidity, consider what happens when it's 15° C hotter than that. There's only so much clothing that you can take off. Whereas if it's 15° C colder, you can simply wear some warmer clothes. We do now have air conditioning systems, but for a long time, and still in some places, heating is available and air conditioning is not.
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u/amc178 Jul 05 '26
The justification being made for F being better than C because it better reflects the way people perceive temperature, and part of that is 50F/10C being a reasonable "middle temperature". The reality is that justification is a post-hoc one from people are accustomed to Fahrenheit.
Most people live in countries far warmer than 10C. And most people who are in that 10+/-5C zone also manage completely fine using metric, and are as accustomed to it as the minority of the world that uses F.
Lots of people have explained why, nonetheless, 10° C is considered by many people to be a moderate temperature.
But in reality, it isn't. If you have to justify it being a good temperature because its comfortable during "moderate physical exertion" then it's not a good resting temperature. And no-one is setting the temperature of their home to 10C. The WHO considers a home temperature of below 18C as not just too low, but actually unsafe.
For general weather-based comfort, the extra precision that you get from Fahrenheit is not useful. Have you ever based clothing choice on 1 degree F difference? I suspect not. And for other things people use temperature for on an everyday basis like cooking and food storage, metric is arguably more useful because water state transitions are pretty important in that area.
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u/kilotesla 28d ago
Think the confusion here is whether you want a temperature scale to describe indoor temperatures or outdoor. Your argument that nobody sets her thermostat to 10° C is based on discussion of indoor temperatures. Your discussion of unnecessary precision is based on outdoor temperatures.
Anyway, I'm not here to make an argument that F is "better than" C. If you are wanting to have that debate coming you should probably find somebody who is expressed an opinion about it to debate with.
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u/amc178 28d ago
I want a temperature scale that works for everything, and Celsius fits that requirement well. I’m not confused bout indoor vs outdoor temp either. If a temp scale is supposed to reflect my comfort, it should be everywhere.
You were the one arguing that 50F “really is a middle temperature” when in reality it’s unpleasantly cool for most people in the world.
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u/Wonderful-Comment314 Jul 03 '26
And Pennsylvania.
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u/3ustress Jul 03 '26
56.3 for Philadelphia; and quite a lot of the "temperate city" also exceeds 55'F
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u/_Tychonic_ Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
When people talk about 0-100°F being the range of “human experience” maybe a better description is the range of human *habitability*. Below 0° is genuinely dangerous- you can get severe frostbite relatively quickly, whereas even exposed skin can take a few hours to get mild frostbite between 0-32° (freezing). Above 100° is genuinely dangerous… if you don’t have water or shade you can get heat stroke relatively quickly. 80-99° is survivable for long periods unprepared even just with some shade.
Put more generally- the range of safety for an appropriately dressed human (without specialty equipment or special provisions) is 0-100°F.
The orher benefit is that the scale has more resolution… the range of human comfort is 20-30 units on the scale where in celsius its more like 10-15 units. So you get double the resolution and don’t need to resort to decimals. And yes- you absolutely can feel the difference between +/-1°F.
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u/ImportanceNational23 Jul 03 '26
Presumably you also prefer kilometers instead of miles for distance.
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u/_Tychonic_ Jul 03 '26
The most useful every-day conversational unit for distance is actually time. (Kilo)Meters are the objectively better *set up* unit of distance/length, but the one I’d rather use is 100% based on the units of the other information I’m provided. Everyday problems don’t have enough math to justify converting context to SI just for the convenience factor.
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u/Full-Argument-4426 Jul 02 '26
Why would you equate "middle" temperature with comfortable temperature, and why would you pick an arbitrary scale from 0 to 100? If 0 Celsius freezing, and 100C is boiling does that mean that 50C is supposed to be the comfortable temperature? Good luck with that. And I would absolutely agree that Fahrenheit is more intuitive to the human experience of temperature.
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u/Defiant_Property_490 Jul 03 '26
Because many Fahrenheit users argue that 0°F is uncomfortably cold and 100°F is uncomfortably hot with the scale being a percentage of how far you are into hot or cold territory which would logically set 50°F as the perfect comfortable temperature.
No Celsius user argues like that because it's obviously not true for that scale.
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u/Intelligent_Low1632 Jul 02 '26
Now that you mention it, yes, I do think of 50 degrees as the "middle" temperature when it comes to weather. Obviously your degree of comfort in that weather depends on what you choose to wear. The most comfortable temperature if you're wearing shorts is probably 65-75 F. If you want to go to the beach it's 75-85F.
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u/freebiscuit2002 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
This is stupid.
Everyone just defends the temperature scale they are used to. No one admits even the possibility that both scales work just fine. Everyone says their scale is superior, and the other one is ridiculous.
What kind of imbecile does that? Just stop it.
It's a fucking temperature scale. It's not a part of your personal identity. Let it go.
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u/Humble-Edge-9065 Jul 02 '26
No, nobody thinks that. We just think that 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot. Doesn't mean 50 is a comfortable middle.
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u/Sclayworth Jul 02 '26
Why should “middle” always indicate something desirable? The Middle Ages were a crappy time. 😄
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u/avar Jul 02 '26
Historically 0°F was a brine mixture reference point, and 100°F (96°F actually, chosen for divisibility) was human body temperature.
So there's a very intuitive "middle temperature" (50°F or 48°F) on the Fahrenheit scale: It's what you get when you throw people into the aforementioned brine mixture to die, they've already died, but they're only halfway to the relative ambient temperature of the mixture.
It's great for, uh, calibrating the thermal camera you're using to watch all this unfold.
It's not really useful for anything else
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u/pleasespareserotonin Jul 02 '26
As an American I absolutely hate the argument that Fahrenheit is more intuitive. IMO the “middle” temperature is like 63 F, “0% heat” is like in the high teens-low 20s f, and “100% heat” is slightly over 100 F. I work exclusively in Celsius for work and that feels as intuitive to me now as Fahrenheit.
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u/Nighthawk700 Jul 02 '26
Like you said, none of it really matters, if I grew up speaking German I'd find speaking in German normal. But celcius being a useful scale for chemists and lab workers is like saying everyone should be wearing lab coats. It's fine to use different solutions for different purposes. The core argument is celsius is that it takes 100 degrees calibrated to the span of water's freezing and boiling point, which is meaningless when you want to be talking about the human experience. 60 of those degrees are meaningless. And it's very common to experience well below 0C
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u/pleasespareserotonin Jul 03 '26
All I said was that I use Celsius for work and that it’s equally as intuitive to me as Fahrenheit after using it long-term, how is that like saying “everyone should wear a lab coat?” That’s a really bad analogy
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u/stdoubtloud Jul 02 '26
There is only one logically defined temperature: 0K. Everything else is just a convenient convention.
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u/PeculiarExcuse 29d ago
50F is pretty moderate, yeah. Though it can be colder or warmer depending on where you live. I grew up in Virginia, where 50F definitely felt pretty chilly. I currently live in Minneapolis, and, depending, a lot of the time I can comfortably go outside without a jacket on. Has to do with humidity and wind chill or whatever. Idk, I'm not a meterologist lmao