What is wind chill?
AUSTIN (KXAN) — With a little more than a day away from the arrival of the coldest air of the season, Meteorologist Nick Bannin explained one aspect of this arctic blast—the wind chill.
The wind chill, also known as the “feels-like” temperature, is the temperature it feels like on exposed skin when wind and cold combine. As a reminder, water freezes when the air temperature is below freezing, not the wind chill.
In the Austin area, wind chills are expected Monday morning in the teens and 20s. Tuesday morning features the coldest wind chills of the week in the single digits above and below zero, and by Wednesday morning, it will not feel as cold.
What is the wind chill?
Our bodies, which are around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, lose heat through convection when the air is colder than our bodies, but with little to no wind, a layer of body heat helps us stay warmer.
So, when it's 20 degrees outside--it feels like 20 degrees, but when you add wind, the moving air breaks up the insulating warm later over our skin. This helps to speed up heat loss by pulling heat away from the body.
A 20-mph wind with a 20-degree temperature would feel like 4 degrees on exposed skin.