ancientsgate wrote:

Russell wrote:

Guhh… It was finally starting to warm up a little, now supposed to drop again, plus get snow this weekend? No more!

Your weekend snow is supposed to be our Monday snow, and ugh. Not warming up here, though-- normal temps of mid to high 30Fs are only 10F here this AM as I write this, and the wind chill, brrrr!  It's the old saying about March, in like a lion, out like a lamb, I guess.  Me, I could do with a few lambs. Baa. 

 
Seriously!  Was surprised it shot up to the low 50's today??  Then back down to 20's (and snow) tomorrow?   

I hold my hand up and admit I don't understand any temperature scale...I think I use 'c' for air temp and ''f' for cooking.

saturnR wrote:

Fahrenheit measure is confusing. Every time I hear temperatures being reported from US or UK, I think you guys are sweltering when you're actually colder than us Au people

We Americans have clung to our English measurements of all kinds. Unless you're an auto mechanic, a scientist or a medical person, no one uses metric here. We've never been forced to leave our English measurements behind, so we never have. All signage is in English measurements, as are all cookbooks, all sewing patterns, etc. Kids are taught the metric system in school, just in case they're ever an auto mechanic or scientist or go into medicine, lol, but no one takes it seriously.

I think the Brits are more and more going metric. Understandable, since they're so close to the rest of Europe geographically and culturally. I imagine, like bb said, their cookbooks are still using English measurements. However. In the US, I don't believe you could find a cookbook in which a recipe called for 500 ml of water, rather than a two cups, for instance.
 

ancientsgate wrote:

We Americans have clung to our English measurements of all kinds.

I don't know about temperature but I know Chinese people also have traditional measures for distance and weight with similar terminology to the UK/US one but physically different sizes.

We also have inches and we sometimes refer to a British inch (don't know if they're the same thing). Our mile is half a kilometre (different to the English mile) and our pound is half a kilogram (don't know if it's the same as the British pound).

We used to have very different time measures. 12 hours in 1 day & 10 days in 1 week. This didn't change until the collapse of the last dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Last edited by saturnR (March 2, 2014 8:28 pm)

'Soda', is a big enough problem in itself!

besleybean wrote:

'Soda', is a big enough problem in itself!

You call it fizzy drink, right?
In some regions of the US, all soda is called coke. Lower case 'c'.
I find that strange, but the US is a big place, of course, so....
I actually grew up calling soda "tonic", and if I ever hear anyone calling it that these days, I know for sure that they come from my portion of New England. Outside this area, the term tonic for Coke, Pepsi, 7-Up, ginger ale, root beer, etc, is unknown. A true regionalism.
Sorry, this has wandered way far away from the weather. Back to our thread subject now?

 

saturnR wrote:

We used to have very different time measures. 12 hours in 1 day & 10 days in 1 week. This didn't change until the collapse of the last dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Woah! That is freaky! But fascinating!
 

Russell wrote:

besleybean wrote:

'Soda', is a big enough problem in itself!

 
Ha… I knew someone would bring that up! Soda, pop, cola, coke, fizzy drink, what have you.
But sun! Yaaay, sun! (bah… still cold… maybe it'll melt the snow we got)

 
We've had it quite mild today (for the time of year) here in the UK.
Not that I'm trying to rub it in or anything though!

Davina wrote:

Just thought I saw a UFO! It was the sun!

*smile*
 

It's sunny here too, but not so warm (11°C). Then again, it actually IS warm for this season ;] I'm maybe weird but I wish I had longer winter with snow than only 3 weeks in January! It's quite uncommon for my country!