Examples include the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) or proprietary metrics like Weather Underground's "feels like." In recent years, scientists have developed a number of superior alternatives that try to measure what it actually feels like to be outside, taking into account temperature, wind, sunlight, humidity. The real mystery, then, is why weather forecasters continue to use wind chill - even though most experts know that it's wildly flawed. In 2007, Slate's Daniel Engber suggested that "rather than trying to patch up wind chill's inconsistencies, we should just dump it altogether." Many people have pointed this out over the years. So, more often than not, wind chill dramatically exaggerates the cold we actually feel. Those are very particular conditions, and they don't really describe our full range of experiences outside. This formula also assumes you'll be walking directly into a steady wind continuously, with your face totally bare. In other words: If the temperature is 38☏ and the wind chill is 32☏, that means you'd develop frostbite on exposed skin just as quickly as you would if the temperature was 32☏ and there was no wind. "It was developed solely to assess the risk of frostbite on unclothed parts of the body," says Krzysztof Blazejczyk, a Polish researcher who studies the thermodynamics of the human body. The wind chill index is designed for a very precise, very narrow purpose. There's a good reason for that: Wind chill simply doesn't mean what most people think it means. The wind chill indicator gave a misleading picture of what things were really like outside. And Weather Underground reported that it "felt like" 36☏. The precipitation that was falling was clearly coming down as rain. There weren't any puddles on the streets turning into ice. Freezing.Įxcept it wasn't actually freezing. The temperature was 38☏, but with winds occasionally gusting to 8 miles per hour, the wind chill was officially 32☏. ![]() On a recent cold morning in Washington DC, I looked up the weather.
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