DCHP-1 Online

wind chill

• the rate at which exposed human skin cools under given conditions of temperature and wind speed. When the wind chill count is 2,400, exposed flesh begins to freeze.

  • 1949  Even on milder days (-20°F) with a strong wind, the wind-chill factor prevents sustained periods of work.
  • 1957  Army officials here at Fort Churchill, Man. say that . . . all animal life in the district heads for shelter when the wind chill climbs to 1,750.
  • 1958  The thermometer might read ten below zero but the weather report would point out that due to the "wind chill" it was as cold outside as it would be at forty below zero in still air.
  • 1962  The Calgary Herald obligingly broke out a kind of cold weather discomfort index called a wind chill index. Based on studies at the joint U.S.-Canadian Weather testing station at Churchill, the wind chill index goes on the theory that, just as in summer when it is not the heat but the humidity, in winter it is not the cold but the wind. Thus the wind chill index measures both; a temperature of -30° with little or no wind is not as bad as a temperature of, say, 20° above zero with a 20-m.p.h. wind.