I would say that it is befitting the legacy of John Quincy Adams that nobody had any questions https://t.co/8MbPwW7Wg6
— David Grossman (@davidgross_man) July 3, 2026
I replied:
No questions because all the answers you need can be found in his meticulous diary. Wanna know the weather in St Petersburg, Russia, on July 3, 1812? You bet he recorded it...
However, I did have a question after looking at JQA's entry for July 3, 1812: what the hell is that temperature notation?
The answer appears in his diary as well, albeit obliquely. Here's August 12, 1783 (when he was in Paris with his dear ole dad):
I met the Abbé Arnaud at the Thuileries. and we walk’d together together to Passy...The Abbé has travelled thro’ Poland, and talk’d a good deal about that Country. For the Climate he says that for the first fortnight in November it commonly snows there continually, and from that time untill the latter end of February, a continuation of very severe colds he has seen Reaumur’s Thermometer at the degree of 28 below. 0. This is quite different from the weather at Petersburg.
That is his earliest reference to the Réaumur scale, which subsequently pops up 108 more times. There are also a few hundred mentions of "Fahrenheit’s thermometer" beginning in 1786.
It seems Adams started systematically recording weather data in August of 1807 using Fahrenheit, presumably because he was in the United States at the time. Looks like it didn't last long, but he picked back up again in St Petersburg for his New Year's resolution in 1811, clearly using Réaumur (without notation). Returning to America, we see the other scale again. A real code switcher, that John Quincy Adams.
In conclusion: when in Russia, do as the Russians do.
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