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‘Feels like’ temperature in cold and wind.
Wind chill describes how cold it feels on exposed skin once wind is taken into account. Moving air strips away the thin layer of warmth your body builds up at the skin surface, speeding up heat loss so it feels far colder than the thermometer shows.
This calculator uses the 2001 North American wind chill formula adopted by the U.S. National Weather Service and Environment Canada to convert temperature and wind speed into a feels-like value, along with an approximate frostbite-risk warning.
This is the current North American formula. It applies for air temperatures of 50 °F (10 °C) or below and wind speeds above 3 mph (4.8 km/h), using wind measured at the standard 10 m (33 ft) height. Outside that range the feels-like temperature is essentially the air temperature.
It is an index of how cold the air feels to exposed skin when wind is factored in. Wind continually removes the warm boundary layer next to your skin, increasing heat loss and making a given temperature feel colder.
No. Wind chill only speeds up how quickly an object cools toward the air temperature. A car, pipe, or puddle can never drop below the actual air temperature no matter how strong the wind.
As a rough guide, frostbite on exposed skin becomes possible within about 30 minutes near a wind chill of −18 °F (−28 °C), within 10 minutes near −35 °F (−37 °C), and within 5 minutes at roughly −55 °F (−48 °C) or colder.
The 2001 formula was derived and validated only for cold conditions — temperatures at or below 50 °F (10 °C) with wind above 3 mph. Above that, wind has negligible cooling effect, so the feels-like value equals the air temperature.
No. It uses only air temperature and wind speed. Bright sunshine can make it feel a few degrees warmer, and it is a separate index from the heat index, which handles warm, humid conditions instead.