Posted on 08/10/2003 11:01:29 AM PDT by knighthawk
Britain has experienced its first-ever recorded temperature above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) as sweltering weather conditions blanketed the south of the country, forecasters said.
The temperature in the shade at Heathrow airport, just west of London, hit 37.9 Celsius (100.2 Fahrenheit) just before 3:00pm (12:00am AEST), the Met Office, Britain's government meteorological bureau, told AFP.
"The temperatures are still climbing, so we might well go even higher soon," a spokesman said.
Earlier in the day the previous record high of 37.1 degrees Celsius (98.8 Fahrenheit), set in Cheltenham, central England in August 1990, was exceeded, also at Heathrow.
British temperature statistics go back to the mid-1870s, when measuring techniques were first standarised.
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Britain records hottest day ever
Britain has experienced the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the country, with the heat at Heathrow airport just west of London hitting 37.4 Celsius, meteorologists announced.
The temperature exceeded the previous high of 37.1 degrees Celsius (98.8 Fahrenheit), set in central England in August 1990, early Sunday afternoon, the Met Office, Britain's government meteorological bureau, told AFP.
Later Sunday the mercury was expected to exceed 100 Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) for the first time since British weather records began, Met Office forecaster Martin Rowley said.
"In summer, the peak of the heat isn't usually until around 5:00pm, so we should go higher yet," he said.
"It's only a bit to go to 100 degrees, so I'd say there's a fair chance still."
Millions of Britons have been flocking to beaches, lakes and parks in recent days as the country has been blanketed under the heat wave currently affecting much of Europe.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s921200.htm
To a European, 40 degrees is fecking scorching. -10 is fecking cold. Europeans don't wander around wondering if it's really cold or not because they're not using the F scale. 40 to them means just what 105 would mean to you. The centigrade scale was invented to put temperatures in terms of water. 100 equals boiling, 0 equals freezing. I tend to convert all temperatures in my head to both C and F depending which one I get first. For a benchmark, 37 is body temperature.
As far as the distance- tens are much more sensible to work with. Anybody can count in tens, hundreds, thousands. Not quite as easy to multiply times 5,280 or 1,760 or 36 or twelve.
The US military uses metric for distance- because it's smarter. I try not to read a whole lot more into it than that.
You're never going to have to worry about losing the various scales of measure we use because it would be much too costly for the US to retool. You'll be able to go on using measures based upon how far a Roman soldier could march etc until you die. In the UK, they do you one better. They measure human weight in stone. I still don't how much I weigh in stone- probably never will.
What do I weigh in pebbles?
More like Texans wouldn't survive over there (without A/C).
I find it amazing now that we actually went through a period of coehersive conversion to the metric system here in the US. Remember back in the 70s', I think it was, Carter was in office and we were going to all convert to the metric system within the span of just a few years. It would save buillions and buillllions of dinero because nobody would have to do any conversion any more.
In the 1970's there was a major effort to increase the use of the metric system, and Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 to speed this process along. However, American consumers generally rejected the use of metric units for highway distances, weather reports, and other common measurements, so little was accomplished except for the encouragement of faster metric conversion in various scientific and technical fields. Interesting website...http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html
The implication here being that the Brits are wimps? Hardly. I'm rather sure that you'd bitch about the cold and wet if you lived in the UK. They're simply not acclimated to this kind of heat, just as you're not acclimated to cold and wet. Want a comparison? Every time it gets icy or snowy in Texas, everyone freaks out, bitches about it being "so cold," slams their cars into each other, etc.
All I know is I've dropped a few "stones" during this summer! Probably enough to make a boulder.
I fully comprehend the metric system and the Celsius scale but I still prefer the British Imperial system of weights and measures and I hope we never change.
I like my miles and inches and it will never sound right having a speed limit of 90 kilometers per hour or a snowstorm with 40 centimeters of snow. Likewise, I like my Fahrenheit. You do get a more accurate sense of how warm or cold it is with Fahrenheit simply because the scale is larger.
As for stones, well the British can keep their stones.
Well, then, it's offical. You ARE my hero... Thanks for reminding me why I dislike some Texans.
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