How does wind feel cool on the skin even if the air itself isn’t a low temperature?
In: Physics
It’s actually because of evaporative cooling. Your body releases small water molecules through skin pores all the time. Even at the same temperature the dry wind sucks some of the fastest moving (hottest) H2O molecules thus cooling you down. That’s why hot dry air feels cool but humid hot air does not.
When there’s no wind your body heats up the air that is touching you. There is now a area around you that is warner than the rest of the air. This air insulated your body and you loose heat more slowly. When there is wind that warmer air is removed and replaced with woolen air that can cool you more quickly.
Its moving the air around you acting as a heat exchanger. The heat your body puts off is moved away causing a cooling sensation.
It is a low temperature, in relation to your body’s temperature (37C/98.6F), and the dryer it is the more it will evaporate the warm layer of moisture on the surface of your skin. Blowing 40C humid air at you will certainly not feel cool.
The sense of “cool” is heat leaving the skin.
Air blowing over your skin removes heat through convection.
The same effect as when you blow on a hot spoonful of soup or blow on a cup of tea to remove heat from them.
Airflow. If the air isn’t moving, the air immediately around your skin is actually slightly warmer than the air a few inches away and it should stay pretty much the same. If the air is moving, fresh (slightly cooler) air is replacing that slightly warmer air constantly.
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