Wind Chill

 

It’s the middle of November, and we are already flirting with freezing here at the Boggy Thicket for the third time this fall.  We woke up to 35 degrees this morning, with a wind chill of 28, and tomorrow morning’s forecast calls for temps in the upper 20s.

The actual formula used to calculate wind chill (for people using Fahrenheit thermometers) looks like this:

but it’s a lot simpler to just refer to a chart.

Either way, I can tell you that wind chill calculations don’t tell the whole story.  They fail to take psychology into account.

In the early 70s, I spent three weeks in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Daily highs were in the single digits and the lows each night ranged from 30 to 35 below zero.  I have tried to explain to my wife how cold that was, but finally realized that it was impossible.  She has no frame of reference – it was like trying to explain purple to a blind man.

The coldest I ever felt was not in Minnesota, but in Mexico.

In 1962, a disc jockey at KBIL in Beeville, Texas, had a heart attack, and I was hired out of radio school to cover for him until he was back on his feet.  One Saturday, I drove down to Villa Acuña for the weekend.  It was in the 70s when I left Beeville, and almost 80 when I crossed the border, but then, about two p.m., a blue norther blew in dropping the temperature over 40 degrees in less than an hour.

I spent almost all of my money on a really ugly coat – the warmest garment I could find in the mercado – and still thought I was going to freeze to death before I could get back home.