🌡️ How it feels
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The apparent temperature — how hot or cold it actually feels on your skin, combining air temperature with humidity, wind and sunshine.
The feels-like temperature, also called apparent temperature, estimates how hot or cold the air actually feels to the human body, rather than what a thermometer reads. It blends the air temperature with humidity, wind speed and sometimes solar radiation, because all of these change how quickly your body loses or gains heat. The result can differ from the measured temperature by ten degrees or more.
Your body constantly loses heat to its surroundings, mainly by radiating it, by warming the air touching your skin, and by evaporating sweat. You do not feel the air temperature directly — you feel the rate at which you are gaining or losing heat. Anything that speeds up heat loss makes it feel colder; anything that slows it down makes it feel warmer.
When it is hot, your main cooling method is sweating, and sweat only cools you as it evaporates. Humid air is already nearly saturated with water, so sweat evaporates slowly and you stay hot. This is why a humid 30°C feels far more oppressive than a dry 30°C. The heat index captures this combination of temperature and humidity.
When it is cold, a thin layer of warmer air clings to your skin. Wind strips that layer away and replaces it with cold air, speeding heat loss dramatically. This is wind chill: a -5°C air temperature in a strong wind can feel like -15°C or colder on exposed skin. Wind chill only affects objects that generate heat, like people and animals.
Meteorological services use formulas that combine the measured air temperature with humidity (in warm conditions) or wind speed (in cold conditions). Some apparent-temperature models also add the warming effect of direct sunshine, which can raise the felt temperature by several degrees on a clear day. The value here comes from a model that blends these factors.
High humidity slows the evaporation of sweat, your body's main cooling system, so you feel hotter than the measured air temperature. Direct sunshine adds to the effect.
Wind strips away the thin layer of warm air next to your skin and replaces it with cold air, speeding up heat loss. This is the wind-chill effect.
Heat-index and wind-chill effects apply to living things that lose body heat. A parked car cools to the actual air temperature, not the wind-chill value.
It depends on conditions. In hot weather humidity dominates the feels-like value; in cold weather wind speed dominates.