rAd, , Terrace Review — Wednesday, Janyaty.2, 1994 It’s not the ter by Tod Strachan It may comfort many local people after the past week to know that the coldest place in Canada is not Terrace. According to Environ- ment Canada climatologist David Phillips it’s Alert, a remote weather station located on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the Northwest Territories. (Cana- dian Geographic, February/March | 1988). Look it up in an atlas and you'll find that Alert is about where Canada ends. Still, the cold probably got to many local residents’ Monday morning. In fact if you were wan- dering around outside Monday | moming you were colder than an Alert weatherman. There’s a new | phrase for our tourism brochures. According to Terrace weather 7 office supervisor, Adrian Van de Mosselaer, it was -34°C in Alert Monday moming and winds were calm. In Terrace, it was -22°C but winds were far from calm. Out- @ flow gusts of 90 kilometres per hour were recorded at the Terrace/- Kitimat airport, and 67 kilometres per hour was the highest wind recorded at the old Skeena bridge. In effect, then, it was colder than _ -50°C in Terrace Monday morn- a ing... And that’s cold. Why do we suffer so?. Wind chill, Wind chill is a way. of describing how cold we feel with various combinations of temperature and wind. A tempera- ture of -20°C is one thing, but add a 30 kilometre per hour (18 mile per hour) wind it feels the same as it would if it were -37°C.. The loss of body heat increases with a rise in wind velocity because moisture evaporates more quickly and body heat is blown away from the surface of the skin. Therefore, by increasing the speed of the wind, you increase the rate at which your body loses heat and you feel colder. Just how cold you feel depends on a number of fac- tors. It varies if you are jogging, walking or sitting. If the sun is shining it can make a difference and the relative humidity — the amount of moisture in the air — changes things too. So does your age, health and type of clothing you're wearing. An important point to note, though, is that wind chill doesn’t affect your house or your car the same as it does you or your pet. You put the wind chill principle to good use when you blow on your coffee our soup to cool it, but the effect of a winter’s wind on your body temperature is different than on some inanimate object. The liquid in your car radiator, for example, will cool faster when you tum the engine off if there is a wind than if it isn’t blowing, But the temperature of. that liquid won't drop below the actual tem-— perature shown on a thermometer. In other words, if the actual tem- perature is -20°C: and the wind chill factor is -50°C, you will feel as though the temperature is -50°C but the temperature of your engine and coolant will never go below -20°C. The important point here is that your cat won't start easier in the morning if you park its tail to the temparature for living things like humans down to -50°C, This grim scene at the Terrace-Kitimat airport last weekend sums up the beginning of the year — intensely cold. Although temperatures were not far from what could be expected here in January, stiff, persistent winds drove the wind chill-compensated wind. . The principle for determining wind chill was discovered in the Antarctic over 50 years ago. ‘According to Phillips: "The polar explorer and geographer, Paul Siple, | first ‘used the term wind chill. in 1939. During the second expedition ‘of Admiral Richard ‘Byrd, Siple and his partner, Charles Passel, conducted experi- ments at Little America, Antarc- tica, on the time required to freeze water in plastic vials exposed outside in the wind. They devel- oped a formula for relating heat loss to wind speed and air tem- perature, expressed in units. of atmospheric cooling; i.¢., watts per square metre, Later, the formula was modified to allow computation of a wind chill equivalent tempera- ture.” Since Phillips wrote his article for Canadian Geographics, the term wind chill equivalent tem- perature has been re-evaluated by Environment Canada and a dif- ferent method is used to calculate something called "wind chill fac- tor". The advantage to this is that the wind chill factor reflects a more realistic rate of cooling, the combined effect of wind and tem- perature on human flesh, Although the watt per square meter is the official Environment Canada measurement, it is rarely used. It’s simply too confusing. A watt is a measurement of activity or the rate of work (removing heat in this instance) and the square metre is the exposed area over which that activity is measured. Obviously no one goes outside with a square metre of flesh exposed in the winter — that would be close to nude — so the term is somewhat meaningless. To put this scale of measurement to practical use, however, you only need to remember a few numbers: *700 — Expect a pleasant day for outdoor activities . like cross country skiing if you're dressed in normal ski garb. This situation exists with a wind/temperature combination of. 10 kph/7°C; 20 kph/11°C; 30 kph/i3°C; 60 kph/16°C. ©1200 — DRESS WARM. Condi- tions are safe, but dress with win- ter attire such as gloves or mitts and a toque. This situation exists with a wind/temperature combina- tion of 10 kph/-11C, 20 kph/-4°C; 30 kph/0°C; 60 kph/3°C. #1600 — IT’S COLD. It will feel “quite cold and frostbite may become a problem. It will depend on whether the sun is shining and how active you are. This situation... F exists with a temperature/wind combination of 10 kph/-24°C; 20 “kph/-15°C; 30 kph/-11°C; 40 ” kph/-8°C; 60 kph/-6°C. ,°2000 — CAUTION. Exposed ‘flesh may freeze within several minutes. Work and travel alone is not advisable. This situation exists ’ with a temperaturefwind combiria- tioi of 10 = kph/-39°C; 20 _ kph/-28°C; 30° kph/-22°C;, 40 _ kph/-19°C; 60 kph/-16°C,.. *2200 — DANGER. Conditions outside are dangerous. Adequate face protection becomes . manda- tory; work and travel alone is ‘hazardous. - This situation exists with a temperature/wind combina- tion of 10 kphy-46°C; 20 kph/-34°C; 30 kply-28°C, 40 “kph/-25°C; 60 kph/-22°C. Phillips goes on in his article on wind chill to offer some interesting statistics. The highest wind chill values in Canada are found are normally found northwest of Hudson Bay in January. Baker Lake, N.W.T., is apparently not a nice place to live in this month. Go further north, though, and the winds are less severe and the wind chill less severe as well. 3 For those of us living in the southern part of the country: "Win- nipeg has wind chills comparable to those in the High Arctic and Montreal is not unlike the rela- tively calm Yukon. The percentage of time that the wind chill exceeds -20°C in January is 83 percent at Winnipeg, 62 percent at Edmon- ton, 42 percent at Ottawa, 17 per- cent at Halifax and under one. percent at Vancouver and Victo- Tia." Phillips apparently never visited Terrace; he doesn’t mention our burg. (Or is that berg?) Also, "The coldest wind chill since recordings were begun in : 1953, occurred at Pelly Bay, | N.W.T., on January, 13, 1975, _ when the equivalent .wind chill ‘ temperature was -92°C. At the time, the air temperature was 51°C and the winds were 56 . km/h. Edmonton’s worst episode was on December 15, 1964, with a numbing wind chill reading of 67°C." Here again, Phillips doesn’t make note of our winter winds in the northwest, But from a tourism point of view... Who cares? Any records we make are best kept to ourselves. umbia. ae As a Senior in Terrace, TERRACE you're invited to participate in SENIOR’S SAFETY WEEK JANUARY 13th - 19th A series of informative presentations will ‘|. be held at the Happy Gang Centre. January 14th — Fire Safety with Fire Chief Bob Beckett January 15th — Traffic and Home Security with Con- stable Jane Andrews, Crime Prevention/Victims Ser- vices office - Terrace RCMP January 16th — Prescription and Alcohol Safety with Patti Chapman, Northern Healthcare | January 17th — Oral Health and Hygiene with Shirley Humphrey, Dental Hygienist - Province of British Col- All presentations begin at 10:30 a.m. and end at 11:30 a.m. Senlors requiring transportation can call Gurdy Grundmann at the Happy Gang Centre at 635-9090. Watch for the Senior Safety displays Co-op — January 16th - 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Skeena Mall — January 19th - 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Terrace — with a whole lot in store for seniors! "