Because for weather, °F is arguably better. 0°F - 100°F is the general range that most weather on the planet happens at (yes I know there are extremes where it gets to like -30°F or 120°F, but bear* with me). You can then further break those up into 10°F segments that are a bit more practical and granular than 10°C segments:

under 0°F: stay inside
0°F - 10°F: really fucking cold, don't stay out too long or you risk hypothermia
10°F - 20°F: still really cold, but you can stay out long enough to shovel your driveway without fear of losing fingers/toes, if you're wearing winter gear
20°F - 30°F: cold but not bitterly so. Perfect weather for outdoor winter activities like sledding or snowball fights
30°F - 40°F: Snow starts melting here, and you can probably ditch the scarf, but you still need a winter jacket
40°F - 50°F: Too warm for your heavy winter jacket, to cold for your light spring jacket. It's layering season baybee
50°F - 60°F: still layering season, but you can probably get by with just a light jacket at this point, especially if you're doing something active outside. Some people start breaking out the shorts, but that's not the norm.
60°F - 70°F: a more generally acceptable range to start wearing shorts and short sleeves. Perfect temps for doing yard work and sipping beers on the patio alike
70°F - 80°F: definitely shorts weather, and pools start coming into play. If you're doing something rigorous outside, you're probably sweating
80°F - 90°F: you'd probably rather be inside, if you're not in a pool. You'll be sweating just lounging in your deck chair.
90°F - 100°F: hot as balls, probably not worth going outside for very long, as the pool water feels like taking a dip in lukewarm soup
Over 100°F: stay inside

Now I know you can do something similar with °C, but the workable range there is smaller, because you're going from like -15°C to 40°C. It's less granular, and the start/stop temps are more awkward.

Is it weird that water freezes at 32°F and boils at 212°F? Sure, absolutely. When you're doing stuff in that context, it absolutely makes sense to use Celsius, where you're working on a nice, neat 0°C-100°C range. But weather, the thing most people contextualize temperatures with, doesn't happen in that range. It starts well below freezing, and (hopefully) doesn't get anywhere close to the boiling point of water. For that, I'd argue °F is actually a little more useful.

[–] zik@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

All these arguments don't really have any effect in reality. As someone born in Australia everyone is super comfortable with Celsius and the problems you describe just don't exist because in the end it's really just what you're used to.

To me Fahrenheit seems incredibly awkward but then I wasn't brought up using it.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah I absolutely recognize that what you're used to or brought up on is gonna have a huge impact on which system you prefer. That being said, I think a Fahrenheit user would have a harder time switching to Celsius, than a Celsius user would switching to Fahrenheit, at least for normal day-to-day weather applications. And for some of the same reasons that people prefer metric units in general - it's more granular, has more resolution, is base 10 (for this application), etc.