Wind chill. Sensationalism?

Valjean said:

This time of year, in my hemisphere, at least, weather reports always feature wind chill indices.
Evidently, wind chill's calculated differently in different countries, even by different agencies, but, essentially, it's a calculated heat loss rate, on naked skin.

Now, nobody's going to go out naked, and your actual heat loss rate will depend on what you're wearing, and which way you're facing,
So what's the point of posting a cooling rate nobody's going to experience? Seems bogus to me. Mostly dramatic sensationalism. They're trying to make it appear colder than it actually is.

Shouldn't they just post air temperature and wind speed, and let people decide what to wear for themselves?

Discuss.

Click to expand...

Valjean said:

This time of year, in my hemisphere, at least, weather reports always feature wind chill indices.
Evidently, wind chill's calculated differently in different countries, even by different agencies, but, essentially, it's a calculated heat loss rate, on naked skin.

Now, nobody's going to go out naked, and your actual heat loss rate will depend on what you're wearing, and which way you're facing,
So what's the point of posting a cooling rate nobody's going to experience? Seems bogus to me. Mostly dramatic sensationalism. They're trying to make it appear colder than it actually is.

Shouldn't they just post air temperature and wind speed, and let people decide what to wear for themselves?

Discuss.

Click to expand...

Valjean said:

Shouldn't they just post air temperature and wind speed, and let people decide what to wear for themselves?

Click to expand...

ideogenous_mover said:

Well the way it works, up here, is that if there is no wind, and it's -5, compared to if it's -5 with wind, well that is like night and day, kind of. And the whole problem is, these windchill things often come with warning messages, that it will 'cause frostbite in a certain number of minutes.' That's when I personally just decide to stay in. It's been like that here the past week or so, so I just stayed in, basically. Now it looks like we'll get a warm run, in the 20's and 30's, probably with less of a wind chill factor, but we'll see

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