Fahrenheit

I had thought that I would not bother learning to convert Fahrenheit into Celsius. After all, we are only here for a few months and then we can go back to the land of metric measurement. And what use is some strange scale, with no basis in tens, in the rest of the world? I did already kinda know that 100F is about 37C - and usually refers to summer temperatures. And that our freezing at 0C is their 32F. I also kinda worked out that 65F (18C) is a nice inside temperature - as it is the lowest that the heating will go in both the car and the flat! And that minus forty, is minus forty everywhere. Surely - that is enough to get by right? 

Actually no, as it turns out that now it is getting cold (read - proper really freakin' COLD!!) I find myself constantly wanting to convert to find out what the temperature means. Especially when I am in the car and it tells me the outside temperature in Fahrenheit. We just hit our first arctic cold snap - and what does sub-zero temperatures mean to people who talk in "F's intead of "C"s? Very, bloody cold. That is what it means.

This morning it was apparently 3F (-16C),though records have been down to -30F (-34C) at this time of year! Down to about -10C is not so bad, and not so different to Taupo or skiing in NZ. But beyond that it is getting bitter. Now I get why the locals say there can be snow on the ground for 5-6 months - getting about freezing point is limited!! Thankfully we have had very little wind chill....yet!

Tidbits:

• Where in NZ we call the clothing "ski" gear... we use it for skiing; here it is "snow" gear, as it is used for going about everyday business and activities!
• In Australia when the temperature soared at school we sometimes stayed inside; here there seems to be a lower limit of about 5F where the kids play inside instead. 
• School buses rock, so that the car does not have to be defrosted every morning.