I was looking for a printout of wind chill factors and discovered that in 2001, as a result of research done in Canada, the national Weather Service has made significant revisions to their wind chill tables. From their web page:

"Specifically, the new WCT index:

•Calculates wind speed at an average height of five feet (typical height of an adult human face) based on readings from the national standard height of 33 feet (typical height of an anemometer)
•Is based on a human face model
•Incorporates modern heat transfer theory (heat loss from the body to its surroundings, during cold and breezy/windy days)
•Lowers the calm wind threshold to 3 mph
•Uses a consistent standard for skin tissue resistance
•Assumes no impact from the sun (i.e., clear night sky"

These changes produce a startling reduction in the severity of wind chill as illustrated by the graph at the bottom of the page. It might be a good idea to replace any old charts that you may have.

Regards, Vince

Is that the new, warmer weather chart?

Sorry, I'll keep my old ones. I'd rather prep for 20 below than be rudely suprised by fingers that don't work.

I don't like numb fingers either but when it's cold I hate sweat even more. If the wind chill is actually -15* F instead of -40* F I want to know about it.

Regards, Vince

There is another factor that plays into this. For livestock there are wind chill charts based on dry hair coat and wet hair coat.

For example, Cattle with a dry winter coat experience moderate cold stress at around 0-10 degrees F. With a wet hair coat, moderate cold stress occurs in the range of 32-45 degrees.

I do not know if there are such factors calculated for humans, but do know that if your clothes are wet, you should knock some more degrees off the chart. Of course, I guess this would depend on the clothes since some materials insulate better when wet than others.