Fahrenheit is the everyday temperature scale in the United States, the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands and Palau. Everywhere else uses Celsius, at least for the weather forecast.
Why these ones
Fahrenheit was the normal scale across the English-speaking world until the 1960s, when Britain and most of the countries it once ruled moved to Celsius. The US stayed put, and so did a few close neighbours. The Bahamas, Belize and the Cayman Islands still use Fahrenheit day to day.
Why Palau
Palau is in the western Pacific, nowhere near any of them. The US ran it for decades after the Second World War, and since independence in 1994 it has kept a Compact of Free Association with the US. Its official weather still comes from a US National Weather Service office in Koror, the old capital, so its forecasts come in Fahrenheit.
The Marshall Islands and Micronesia have a similar history and often turn up on these lists too, but the data I used doesn’t count them, so they’re green. If you’re from either one, the comments are open.
What about Liberia?
Liberia usually gets named alongside the US and Myanmar as the countries that never went metric. It was founded in the 1820s by the American Colonization Society as a colony for freed slaves and free Black people from the US, and it still uses a lot of American units, especially in markets. In 2018 its commerce minister said the government was committed to adopting the metric system, and its speed limits are now in kilometres. For temperature, the data I used already puts it in Celsius, so the US doesn’t get to count it. Myanmar has been heading the same way.
Greenland is grey because the data has no entry for it.
If you like this sort of thing, see each state’s official drink or European countries with land.
Sources: Unicode CLDR measurement data (what phones and computers use to decide which units to show you), the US National Weather Service in Palau, Wikipedia on the history of Liberia, Liberia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 2018, Metric Views.
See the list
| Country | Everyday temperature |
|---|---|
| United States | Fahrenheit |
| Puerto Rico (US territory) | Fahrenheit |
| Bahamas | Fahrenheit |
| Belize | Fahrenheit |
| Cayman Islands | Fahrenheit |
| Palau | Fahrenheit |
| Liberia | Celsius |
| Myanmar | Celsius |
| Everywhere else | Celsius |
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