Wind Chill

Wind Chill is a mysterious and often misunderstood phenomenon. This script describes what the wind chill factor really is and offers a form to calculate the wind chill factor when given the air temperature and wind speed.

This is the new chart that the National Weather Service will start using for the 2001/2002 winter season and following.

Often when it's cold outside and the wind is blowing, it's difficut to know how cold it will really feel just by finding out what the basic temperature is. Some days feel colder than others when there is a wind blowing, even if the temperatures are the same, and taking the wind into account, you could feel much colder than the temperature itself. This effect is known as the wind chill factor, a measure of the cooling effect of wind. The rate at which a body loses heat increases due to the wind, so the air on a windy day feels cooler than the temperature indicated by a thermometer. This heat loss can be calculated for various combinations of windspeed and air temperature and then converted to a windchill equivalent temperature (or wind chill factor). Our handy little calculator below will instantly calculate the wind chill factor for you if you input the temperature and windspeed.