BEAR PAW Meanderings

Let’s get one thing out in the open right away. There is no such thing as wind chill numbers unless you are going to school, work or the grocery store buck naked.

For wind chill is the measurement of the wind on bare skin. If it was any good it would be used in summer as well. Can you imagine the weatherman telling you to dress warm today because even though it is eighty above, it is only sixty due to the wind chill!

It is hogwash and not to be believed.

I have been trying to debunk this craziness for over fifty years now and have to admit, I am not getting anywhere. People seem to want it to be colder in the winter when they go to work. They are not satisfied to turn off the radio when the announcer gleefully announces that with the wind chill it is fifty below this morning.

My contention is that if Native Americans had heard of wind chill numbers, they would have never stayed here in the first place and the first settlers had to put up with (like in 1907) the first seventeen days of January the warmest temperature being three below. Can you imagine if some weather crackpot came up with the idea that really the high temperature for the first seventeen days in January was minus 25 due to wind chill. That would have sent people skadaddling back home and left this wonderful country completely devoid of people living in it.

What a shame that would have been.

Weather is a matter of using common sense. If you are dressed warm when you go out in the morning, you will keep warm in very cold weather without someone announcing it is colder than it really is! Why, I remember in my day walking the eight blocks to the Devlin School in the winter day after day after day. It was seldom that I ever got a ride and when my bare skin was not exposed, I was fine. About the only things sticking out from my attire were my eyes and nothing else. My eyes never froze.

My biggest obstacle was trying to walk with so many clothes on. I knew that if I tipped over I was a goner so it was with much caution that I trudged over the First Avenue Hill and down to Devlin. When going back home, the teacher got us dressed about an hour before time to go home. It took that long to get us all dressed for the event of walking home. That was in ten below weather. If someone had told us it was really thirty below, I think the entire city would have ground to a halt.

The bottom line is don’t be hoodwinked! Remember this is brought to you by the same government that brought us daylight saving time.

I’ll say it again because I like writing the word. Don’t be hoodwinked by wind chills unless traveling buck naked.