Proverbial

Living in a place where temperature hardly gets below 10°C during the winter, this confirms something I’ve always suspected but couldn’t put to the test:

The language of “equivalent temperatures” creates a fundamental misconception about what wind chill really means. It doesn’t tell you how cold your skin will get; that’s determined by air temperature alone. Wind chill just tells you the rate at which your skin will reach the air temperature. If it were 35 degrees outside with a wind chill of 25, you might think you’re in danger of getting frostbite. But your skin can freeze only if the air temperature is below freezing. At a real temperature of 35 degrees, you’ll never get frostbite no matter how long you stand outside. And despite a popular misconception, a minus-32 wind chill can’t freeze our pipes or car radiators, either.

So, if you’re staying outdoors for more than 5 minutes, -30°C will be worse than -20°C no matter what the wind chill. I wonder how the calculation works for hot days, where temperatures “feel like” hotter than they really are.