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A comment on The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weather buoy. Parent comment

Re:The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weath... by jordanb on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @10:03AM (#12643855)
Knots are much more useful for the primary consumers of this data: mariners. Knots are a global standard for measuring speed at sea. And virtually every weather bureau reports windspeeds in knots or Beaufort scale in their maritime reports with the notable exception being the French who insist using meters/second.

inHg measures are used in aviation btw, but yeah it's less ideal for a maritime report: mariners use millibars for pressure.

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Re:The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weath... by lultimouomo on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @11:17AM (#12644536)
The good thing is that 1m/s is close enough to 2kts that once you have a mental map of "how much wind" is something in knots you can trivially apply it to m/s and vice versa.

inHg on the other hand always has me completely lost.

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Re:The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weath... by JshWright on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @01:07PM (#12645682)
inHg is easy... 1 inHg is roughly 1 ftH2O.

Hope that helps ;)

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Re:The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weath... by imglorp on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @12:45PM (#12645492)
Actually knots are derived from SI, being based on nautical miles (which are SI), which are 1/60th of a degree of latitude. So they're not completely useless or arbitrary like other imperial units.
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