Why the U.S. is stuck on using Fahrenheit for weather forecasts

If the forecast calls for 32 degrees Fahrenheit in Houston, it’s time to bundle up and prepare for possible ice outside. However, if the forecast was in Celsius, it would be a great day to go to the beach.

That’s because the U.S. — and a few other countries — sticks to the Fahrenheit scale for temperatures while the rest of the world uses what many believe to be the simpler Celsius scale, which is part of the metric system.

Why would one of the most populous countries in the world use a temperature scale that doesn’t align with the rest of the world? Unfortunately, there is no exact answer, but there have been arguments and attempts for America to adopt Celsius and the metric system for decades.

German scientist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the scale bearing his name in the early 1700s. It ended up being adopted by the British Empire, and therefore its American colonies, as the standard temperature scale.

The Celsius scale uses water, the most abundant liquid on Earth, for its benchmarks. Water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100 degrees. On the wider Fahrenheit scale, however, water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees.

The freezing and boiling points on the Fahrenheit scale are 180 degrees apart, whereas the same points on the Celsius scale are only 100 degrees apart. Some argue the Fahrenheit scale is better at describing the outside temperature because it has a larger range of temperatures.

A researcher for the Thermodynamic Metrology Group told How Stuff Works that a human can tell the difference between 70 and 71 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 21 and 22 degrees Celsius, making the Fahrenheit scale more precise for the human experience.

Presbyterian minister Frank Crane had a column published in the Houston Post on Dec. 4, 1916, that questioned why America wouldn’t switch over to the metric system.

“A barrel has 4 firkins, a firkin is 9 gallons, a gallon 4 quarts, a quart 2 pints, and a pint 4 gills. Isn’t that a blessed bunch of nonsense when you come to think of it?” Crane wrote. “The metric system is so simple it can be learned in an hour.”