The only problem is that different people feel cold differently. I was in Chicago in November 2000. A number of us from all around the country were at a meeting. We went out to dinner at a restaurant off North Michigan Avenue, near the Water Tower. The temperature was just below freezing and there was the usual Chicago wind off the lake.
After dinner, all the Miami and Phoenix and Texas people wanted to take cabs back to the hotel, about 10 blocks away. The only comment they had that I can even vaguely repeat was "Jesus H. Christ, it's cold!!" But others of us, including me, were quite comfortable, and walked. So a wind chill that would be intolerable to one person might be quite acceptable and far less uncomfortable to another. Watts per square meter, however, represents how much heat your body actually gives off, and is an absolute figure. Environment Canada had a table at one time that indicated how dangerous each level was. Carleton -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of John S. Ward Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 12:54 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:28317] Re: Wind Chill On Thursday 15 January 2004 20:35, Chimpsarecute wrote: > Are Wind chill temperatures ever used in metric countries? I thought the > proper way to measure heat loss was to use units of watts per square metre. > > What is the thinking behind this nonsense? Euric, Which method is nonsense? Calculating heat loss in watts per meter sounds quite useless. What would anyone do with this information? Would this heat loss be reported for bare skin? At what temperature? If not, then what? If it's calculated for bare skin, then how do you use it since most of your surface area on a cold windy day isn't bare skin? Who would know how many watts is too much, anyway? The heat loss per unit area will be quite different through hair versus through skin versus though a jacket versus through pants.... Wind chill, on the other hand, is at least immediately useful and doesn't imply an unwarranted level of precision. "It feels like X degrees." John
