2024-01-31

An article in the Houston Chronicle asks why Americans use the Fahrenheit temperature scale and not the Celsius scale. It's mostly because that's what they are used to, and also because it's what news services and the National Weather Service use when presenting information.

The article quotes Don Hilger, President of the US Metric Association, saying he believes America could become accustomed to using Celsius if the National Weather Service starts using Celsius for weather reports.

I disagree. Americans would become accustomed to using Celsius if the the NWS (and other weather services, broadcast news etc,) changed to the Celsius scale.

The article includes a link to a long list of non-metric measures used in the US compiled by the USMA. Some of them, like parts per mllion and Mach numbers, are also used outside the US and won't be replaced by metric measures. Others, like acre-feet, and its derived rate of change acre-feet per year, could easily be replaced by metric measures.