We’ve all heard the term wind chill.
And we’ve definitely all felt what it means.
But do you really know all there is to know about wind chill? Prior to meteorology school, I certainly didn’t.
Little Did I Know, there’s a big difference in the way objects encounter wind chill.
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And to demonstrate this, I present to you the Dolly Parton vs. Monster Truck Wind Chill Smackdown!
Dolly Parton is a national treasure. And let’s face it, she’s hot.
And so am I, and so are you!
In fact, all humans burn so much energy that their body maintains a nearly consistent, almost 100-degree temperature. Hotter than most summer days in Central Oregon!
A monster truck, when not in use, is whatever temperature it is where it’s sitting.
When in use, they can run hotter than 250 degrees.
Because Dolly burns a fairly consistent 98 degrees, her skin builds a small layer of protective warm air around her body that slowly loses heat to the cooler air outside in an attempt to equalize the environment.
It’s one of the laws of thermodynamics. But I digress.
If we put Dolly Parton into a zero degrees Fahrenheit environment and add wind to the mix, Dolly’s protective heat begins to blow off her body much more quickly. Making her feel cold very rapidly.
Her body starts to lose heat, which isn’t good because the human body slides into hypothermia when it reaches just 95 degrees.
That’s just three degrees of loss from normal!
And for the record, you don’t want to become hypothermic. A Boy Scout trip to the Cascade mountains in Washington gave me the experience to vouch for this fact.
If the monster truck gets put into a zero-degree environment, it slowly sheds the heat from its original location until it reaches zero degrees.
Since it doesn’t have a protective heat layer and isn’t subject to hypothermia, even when the wind chill is -50 degrees, it will never get colder than zero degrees.
So when it comes to who wins in the wind chill smackdown? Well, Dolly wins at feeling wind chill. But the monster truck wins at not potentially succumbing to hypothermia and dying.
But before you start thinking that the monster truck doesn’t encounter any effects from wind chill, consider this. If the monster truck is running at 250 degrees and it’s zero degrees outside and it’s driving at 60 miles per hour, that means it is shedding an enormous amount of heat due to the wind.
That’s why you see some people putting protection over the front grills of their cars and trucks in order to keep the wind chill from stealing too much heat and causing the engine to fall apart.
But Dolly Parton will never fall apart. Because she’s a national treasure.
In the end, like always, the winner in this smackdown is Dolly Parton.
