DAYTON, Ohio (WKEF) — With frigid cold in store for us by Friday morning, wind chills are expected to drop well into the single digits.
It’s talked about heavily every winter, but just what is the wind chill?
Wind chill is a function of temperature and wind speed.
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The wind chill can be felt once a wind speed of 4 miles per hour or greater happens, causing your body to lose heat more quickly than opposed to no wind.
For example, shown in the graphic above, a temperature of -20 and a wind speed of 15 miles per hour results in a -45 wind chill.
There is a thin layer of warmth surrounding our skin, but wind moving across our body will knock the warm layer loose.
This is how we lose heat, and in rare cases, become hypothermic.
Without wind, that layer of heat tends to remain by our skin, keeping us warmer for longer.
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If you were wondering, the coldest wind chill ever recorded in Ohio is -56 in Akron, and the coldest in Dayton was -53 back in January of 1985.
The last time wind chills in the Miami Valley dropped to forty below was January of 2019 when Brookville dropped to a dangerous -42.
As for Friday morning, there won’t be a need for a wind chill advisory, but the area typically gets a handful of those each winter.