Base of cumulous clouds

[Racerx]

LOL.

The "lazy American brain" can barely do math at all, let alone

°F = (°C * 9/5) + 32​

twice (even with a calculator; have you seen those easy order of operation quizzes 85% of the people get wrong?) in addition to the subtraction. division, and multiplication to get to the exact same result in feet.

You don't even need to "understand "Celsius (which is kind of scary since all of our aviation weather is in Celsius). Just do much simpler arithmetic.

 

[Half Fast]

Mini rant first thing in the morning…

On FB, I just came across a post linking a King Schools video with Martha going through the Temp - Dewpoint / 4.4 x 1000 calculation to estimate the cloud base.

Really?

Completely useless and ridiculous except for the knowledge test which, for some inconceivable reason, still uses °F when all reported weather uses °C.

Modern tools and reported bases aside, can you imagine getting a METAR or AWOS, converting both of those number to °F, then doing the subtraction, and then dividing by 4.4? How many errors will that introduce compared with taking the spread in °C and dividing by 2.4 (or for that matter 2.5)?

I guess it’s time for coffee.

Yes, you can divide the spread by 2.5 and multiply by 1000, but in my little pea-sized brain it's simpler to just multiply by 400.