Why does the website say 12am for midnight and 12pm for midday?

Modified on Fri, 16 Dec, 2022 at 12:16 PM

We are aware that there is contention around the use of 12am and 12pm to denote midnight and midday, and that many believe it is technically incorrect due the definitions of 'ante meridiem' and 'post meridiem'. Our hourly 48-hour graphs use the common convention applied to 12-hour digital clocks which use 12:00am to represent midnight and 12:00pm to represent midday. 

We appreciate the noon and midnight are the most suitable terms and these are used in our past weather section for the previous days observations. Using these in the 48 hour graph, however, isn't possible due to space limitations. While 'noon' would fit, using the word 'midnight' would cause issues.

We believe there is enough context around this data point, including a day/night indicator, an end of day line, and the surrounding times for this not to cause too much confusion for our users.

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