If it wasn’t for the wind…
Wind chill is a constant reminder to area residents that it can always feel colder, and for nearly a century, people have been zeroing in on how to determine its impact.
"It actually came around originally in the 30s and the 40s," says National Weather Service Meteorologist Ketzel Levens. "There were some folks doing research in Antarctica, actually. And they decided to do some research into how the wind was affecting the temperature that they were feeling and the effect that it had on their body."
The National Weather Service, however, took almost 30 years to start reporting wind chill, finally starting in 1973. As science evolved, researchers in the early 2000s updated how wind chill is determined.
While there is a complicated formula for determining wind chill, Levens says that there are, at its core, two variables that control wind chill: temperature and wind speed. Yet, paradoxically, temperature has a much greater effect on the wind chill than the wind does.
"So if we assume a temperature of 0°F, for example at 50mph... we would be at a wind chill of -31[°F]," said Levens. "But if we hop up to 80mph instead, still at 0°F, it'd only be -36[°F]. So that's really not that much of a difference versus if we stay at 50mph, but hop down five degrees, it yields almost the same result. We would go from -31[°F] to -38°F if we go from an air temperature of 0[°F] to -5[°F]."
The National Weather Service provides a wind chill chart, so people can determine what the wind chill is going to be for the day. But to Levens, all of that is just numbers.
"At a certain point, you're just cold."
You can hear Community Connection every Tuesday and Thursday at 8am on Northland Morning.
