wind chill factor

[randoskier]

I was gonna ski the other day when it was 13F but 25mph winds. I took a day off after about 5 minutes. The next day I did a combo of downhill and xc in -8 to -3F but no wind. Even the downhill in -3F was infinitely more pleasant than really windy above 10F.

Also, I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma for a year many years ago. 60 straight days of 100+ heat index. Trust me, it's a meaningful metric.

This guy has such an anti-American bias, maybe typical of am expat, it distorts all his thoughts.

Anti-American bias? Plllllease. People who are Anti-American wish America harm. I have suggested nothing of the sort. I hope it gets better! Perhaps your knee-jerk nationalism makes any observation or criticism of American media culture and its infatuation with pseudo-science painful. In that case I hereby apologize, and I promise to watch two John Wayne movies tonight and bake an apple pie while singing the 'banner.

[randoskier]

Wind Chill Factor is total bullshit, I have never seen this "stat" or "heat index" outside of the USA. Wind chill is an exaggeration to sell papers or click bait. How cold you "feel" in wind is a total BS stat". Heat Index is just as stupid and deployed for the same reason- to titillate Americans. That said it was fucking cold on Mt Washington yesterday!

Have you left the USA at all by any chance?

I hate to burst the bubble but they are both widely used terms around the world. Its definitely fair that windchill is a variable thing based on clothing etc but it's a genuine phenomenon and has real world relevance, even if its not an absolute measurement for real world applications (i.e. with clothing).

Heat index, on the other hand, is a very precise scale that is irrelevant to human factors (I.e. clothing)... its simply temperature and humidity, both of which have a direct effect on the human body's ability to cool down. I work in the middle east where the heat index can hit the 70s! (Deg C)

Here, where its very humid (100% humidity at night in the summer) every company, including mine (one of the largest in the world) uses heat index to monitor the safety of the workers. Temperature is an irrelevant stat here and has no helpful meaning for people working outside in coveralls. Heat index is everything and I have the onsite doctors take direct heat index measurements all round the work site every hour and base the work/rest schedules off of it. If the heat index hits 54 deg C, I shut down all non critical work.

A fellow New Yorker sorts out heat index- https://www.gawker.com/the-heat-index-m ... -839576591

[randoskier]

can someone please explain to the ranchers in Montana that windchill is not real. they spend a great deal of money building wind breaks for the cattle. they also waste a lot of time bringing in the winter newborns so they don't freeze to death...from windchill when they are wet. and after you explain to the ranchers that windchill is not real , can you also explain that to the cattle? thanks in advance. looking forward to your explanations.

Most ranchers in Montana these days hail from Hollywood- Whoppi Goldberg, the Batman dude, Letterman, Jeff Bridges, Huey Lewis, etc. Not sure where the cows are from : )

[bauerb]

ok @rando , this is getting boring. you trolled the forum with your original post, now you're trying to keep it rolling with uncreative , faux polarizing statements about Hollywood ranches. give yourself a little pat on your back because I was initially suckered into giving you a serious response. you should hang out over on Reddit.

[JohnSKepler]

omg, the troll thread just took a new troll-turn. "Americans have been carefully conditioned to be ignorant"...blah, blah. frighten "them" with scary weather. lol. Please do not give the cattle scary weather forecasts!!

Yeah, you're probably right @bauerb but, I'm an American so I can say that. That's protocol! It's okay to beat up on what you are but not on what you're not. So, I'm not saying that everyone else hasn't been conditioned, too, but saying so would violate protocol. And when I say "Americans" I'm not saying, "you" to anyone. It's a generalization. However, it would be hard to deny that, from our education system to our television commercials, from social media to our news, we're being constantly conditioned to a) be in fear, b) buy crap we don't need, c) feel good about it.

[bauerb]

I agree that "news" is focused on how to get the customers attention the fastest, and hold it the longest. these are not new concepts "if it bleeds, it leads"....or "above the fold" content from print newspaper days. with so much competition for customer attention, things escalate quickly...and in human behavior, there are only a limited number of instinctual hooks, like fight or flight....modern times give us a couple more hooks like FOMO. but still, unless you are marketing an extreme message, getting the avg person's attention can be hard. but at the same time, a sort of counter-culture current exists of people "rebelling" from the marketing machines, and that gives us : vlogs, influencers, etc....who are perceived as being more "real" that corporations, but are really just corporate puppets most of the time...

if I was in charge of headlines at the weather station, and I got measured on my ability to capture customer attention, I have a choice of headlines:
1. WARNING: you will DIE if you go outside today!!!! Follow these tips if you want to save your family from frozen death!
2. Meteorologists debate the factual correctness of wind effects on core body temperature

[mca80]

but at the same time, a sort of counter-culture current exists of people "rebelling" from the marketing machines, and that gives us : vlogs, influencers, etc....who are perceived as being more "real" that corporations, but are really just corporate puppets most of the time...

The System's Neatest Trick is to direct rebellious impulses into so-called counter-cultures which actually serve the System.

I take wind (and windchill) into account in determining how best to dress for a ski outing. Yes clothes block wind to some extent but unless you are completely covered in plastic they still let wind in.

[randoskier]

I

Wind Chill Factor is total bullshit

Are you saying that you do not believe you lose more heat in the wind than in still air? Basic thermodynamics will tell you that you do lose more heat to moving air than to still air.
Or are you saying that the numbers quoted as "wind chill factor" are inaccurate or not meaningful? On that point there is some room for argument, although I would expect that nearly all weather forecasting and reporting services are using the same calculation, the one used by NOAA:
https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_windchill
https://www.weather.gov/media/epz/wxcalc/windChill.pdf

The latter, not room for argument- the wind chill factor does not stand up to any rigorous scientific examination and the "heat index" is even bigger BS.

[mca80]

The latter, not room for argument- the wind chill factor does not stand up to any rigorous scientific examination and the "heat index" is even bigger BS.

Actually, it does, both do. But since you fail to provide anything other than "I said so," so will I leave it at that. Great discussion.

[randoskier]

The latter, not room for argument- the wind chill factor does not stand up to any rigorous scientific examination and the "heat index" is even bigger BS.

Actually, it does, both do. But since you fail to provide anything other than "I said so," so will I leave it at that. Great discussion.

1. The heat index does not work well with extreme conditions, like supersaturation of air. David Romps, a physicist and climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley and his graduate student Yi-Chuan Lu, found that the heat index was underestimating the severity of intense heat waves, such as 1995 Chicago heat wave. Other issues with the heat index include unavailability of precise humidity data in many geographical regions, assumption that the person is healthy and has easy access to water and shade.

The human body normally cools itself by perspiration, or sweating. Heat is removed from the body by evaporation of that sweat. However, high relative humidity reduces the evaporation rate. This results in a lower rate of heat removal from the body, hence the sensation of being overheated. This effect is subjective, with different individuals perceiving heat differently for various reasons (such as differences in body shape, metabolic differences, differences in hydration, pregnancy, menopause, effects of drugs or drug withdrawal); its measurement has been based on subjective descriptions of how hot subjects feel for a given temperature and humidity.

In other words subjective BS.

2. In the 1960s, wind chill began to be reported as a wind chill equivalent temperature (WCET), which is theoretically less useful. At first, it was defined as the temperature at which the windchill index would be the same in the complete absence of wind. This led to equivalent temperatures that exaggerated the severity of the weather.

It is determined by iterating a model of skin temperature under various wind speeds and temperatures using standard engineering correlations of wind speed and heat transfer rate. Heat transfer was calculated for a bare face in wind, facing the wind, while walking into it at 1.4 metres per second (5.0 km/h; 3.1 mph).

Again BS.