What is wind chill? The perceived temperature can accelerate frostbite.

As temperatures drop and winds howl this winter, you’ll hear about the dangers of “wind chill.” So what is it?

Wind chill temperature indicates how cold people (and animals) are outside. According to the National Weather Service, wind chill is based on the rate of heat loss from exposed skin caused by the combination of wind and cold.

As the wind increases, it removes heat from the body, causing skin temperature and ultimately the body’s internal temperature to decrease.

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“This is what it feels like when you’re out in cold weather and windy weather,” Bob Oravec, senior weather service forecaster at the Weather Prediction Center, told Popular Science.

What do wind chill numbers mean?

The wind chill makes it feel much colder than it really is, so it is described as a “palpable” number. If the temperature is 0 degrees and the wind is blowing at 15 mph, the wind chill is 19 degrees below zero.

Low wind chill numbers are a sign that you need to dress for colder conditions. For example, if the wind is around 40 degrees below zero, exposed skin can freeze after just 10 minutes.

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The wind chill map shows when frostbite is a danger

A graphic from the weather service shows the connection between temperature, wind and the time until frostbite occurs.

The weather service began incorporating wind chill into its forecasts in the early 1970s, several decades after Antarctic researchers first published research on it in the late 1930s.

The U.S. and Canadian weather services revised the wind chill index in 2001, based on greater scientific evidence and on experiments that tested how quickly volunteers’ faces cooled in a wind tunnel under different wind and temperature combinations.

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What is wind chill? The perceived temperature can accelerate frostbite.

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