GRAND RAPIDS — Cold winter days often feel colder due to the wind, but what’s the science behind wind chills?
Naturally, our bodies create a lot generating heat and we lose that through convection, but then the wind comes into play.
Whenever we have no wind, and the actual temperature is 20 degrees we still lose a little bit of that heat but overall our bodies stay a bit warmer still feeling like 20 degrees.
Once we factor in the winds such as 20 mph gusts… it makes the moving air break up the insulating warm layer around our bodies and that’s what makes the feel like temperatures colder. This helps speed up the process of that heat loss making 20 degrees feel like 4 degrees.
Today we will have colder temperatures in the teens feeling like the single digits but this is a good reminder of why all those winter layers are important to stay warm during the colder months.
