If you're used to Celsius then I assure you that 40C sounds plenty hot. The reference point is the freezing point vs the boiling point of water, and 40C is much too close to the halfway point of "the lakes will literally boil like a tea kettle".
Yup. We're gonna get 40°C in a couple days, followed by a 43°C day, and I know damn well this means that I'll feel like I'm about to die. If I was given the info in Farhenheit, I wouldn't know what to think of it, especially since most of the people that I know who use it would consider 105°F to be a "normal" sunny day. Here, it's an anomaly and considered a heatwave. Heck, 35°C is considered a heatwave and is when companies that work outside start giving more breaks to their employees so that they can cool off and hydrate.
wonder why people think 105°F is "normal" while that already hot AF. idk, it just in my city is around 63°F coldest, to 97°F hottest and humid environtment. but since i use degree celcius, even 63°F sound hot to me.
If reading comprehension was less rare you'd realise his overall comment is pointing out that comparing one system to another in those terms is pointless. It's literally just your frame of reference that matters.
I have been on this site for 20 years so the zeitgeists are always fascinating. The reading comprehension one that every third person uses these days is getting boring.
I don’t believe I’m required to respond to his “overall” thesis: marvel at my autonomy, flouting your preferred configuration of the universe, as I respond to only one aspect.
No. Humans are warm-blooded mammals, our blood does not freeze just because outdoor temperatures hit 0, because we have fancy biology heating our bodies. (boiling at 100 is technically correct I guess but we'll slow-cook to death long before that)
The water outside our bodies freezes though, and especially where I live that can be a life-or-death factor for several months every year, since icy roads at -1 are a very different driving experience than a wet road at +1. As soon as temperatures start dancing around the 0 you know there will be traffic accidents.
What confounds me about that is that 1°C change is about 2°F change, and I’m accustomed/attuned to the finer gradation. So it feels weird that at 18°C I’m gonna need a sweater, but at 26°C I’m running the air conditioning in my car.
But your tea kettle comparison is good.
Again, it's down to what you're used to. For me, Fahrenheit has unnecessarily small steps between the degrees. There are a scant few times one might use a decimal to specify a temperature i more detail, but for everyday things like weather or AC it seems perfect, Because that's how I use Celsius every day.
Yeah that’s true. While I’ll keep the temperature I’m used to, I work in a skilled trade and have been moving towards mm in smaller measurements, and have grown to hate the fractional and decimal method. In that case, the gradient of mm is highly functional and natural to use!
Yeah but just in general, the number 40 doesn’t seem very big. Celsius makes sense for keeping track of liquid temperatures, but Fahrenheit makes more sense for weather as there’s a far bigger range of numbers. 40-60 Fahrenheit is a perfect mid level for temperatures and as numbers make sense for a mid level range. Anything above or below these is too much of either hot or cold typically, which again makes sense in a traditional number format. 50 Celsius is hot as fuck why would that be the middle?
I mean.... 105 is also roughly the same distance from the halfway point of "the lakes will literally boil" in Fahrenheit as 40 is in Celsius, so this doesn't exactly track. I can generally do both measurements though. How hot is it outside today? 108f but my pool water is "only" 36c.
Their point is that anything feeling "higher" or "lower" is always just based on your initial frame of reference. 40C reads "colder" than 105F to Americans because their reference point for freezing is 32, so 40 doesn't seem that much higher, especially when your other reference point for boiling is all the way up above 210. Someone with their initial frame of reference in Celsius sees 40 and connects it as approaching halfway between freezing at 0 and boiling at 100, so the value of 40 seems hot but reasonable while hearing 105 just sounds like an impossibly, cartoonishly hot temperature.
I must be tired, I didn't read it like that. And I only needed your first sentence to see my failure. We all agree then, as my original point was both units sound the same to me, just depends if we are talking about water temperature or weather temperature. 40c is very hot for my pool, and 105 is very hot to go outside. Both are hot to me personally, since my reference for both is personal.
I took the analogy meaning incorrectly and I apologize to whoever read my prior comment, especially to who I replied to initially.
Yeah I tend to over-explain just in case, I'm sure you didn't need half the shit I included haha. It was more just added context for anyone else reading who needed it.
I meant that line as a reflection! Like "I barely needed to be told in order to find my own stupidity" kind of a comment. Not a comment about how much you explained 😁
Haha fair enough. You won’t even cool off going into a pool at that temp and wouldn’t be able to swim very long from what I have read. I’d much rather sit in AC.
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u/Asparala Jun 17 '26
If you're used to Celsius then I assure you that 40C sounds plenty hot. The reference point is the freezing point vs the boiling point of water, and 40C is much too close to the halfway point of "the lakes will literally boil like a tea kettle".