why does wind and air feel colder when we're wet?

Question

when i come out of the shower or rain and i walk in to a fanblast or wind comes through the window i feel colder than if i was dry. why is this?

Answer 1

This has little to do with conductivity, dew points or all the other paraphernalia referred to in several answers. Like most answers it is simpler than you imagine. Some people may recognise parts of the following, accidentally included in their answers.

The evaporation of water involves a change of state from liquid to vapour. The thermal energy required to do this is the Latent Heat of Evaporation.

When you emerge from the shower the liquid water on your body begins to evaporate into vapour, extracting the thermal energy from your skin. Your skin has lost heat energy so it IS colder and you feel it because that's what your skin sensors do, they feel things.

The rate of evaporation is determined partly by your body temperature but mostly by the humidity of the surrounding air. As the air around you approaches 100% humidity (i.e. already holding the maximum water vapour for its temperature), evaporation slows down and the cooling effect is reduced proportionately.

If there is an air current the surrounding air, made moist by your evaporation, is continually being carried away and being replaced by drier air, so evaporation proceeds at a higher rate with greater cooling effect.

A dry slow wind that was warmer than your body temperature would still cool you because it is increasing the rate of evaporation. A stronger wind of 100% humidity and higher than body temp. would not cool you because it would prevent evaporation. That's what it all boils down to.

Answer 2

The total heat energy in air is the temperature measured by a thermometer plus latent heat. The latent heat is the energy that was used to evaporate the water in that air sample.

Assuming no external heating or cooling, the temperature of air goes up and down as the moisture content of the air changes. The more moisture, the lower the temperature. When the air is holding the maximum moisture it can at that temperature and the temperature drops further, it has to rain. That's the dew point.

Air will absorb more moisture if it can and in doing so some heat has to be used to change the water into vapour. So the air temperature drops a little - giving you that cooling effect.

Answer 3

Air has a certain capacity to hold water vapour, the higher the temperature, the more water vapour. 100% humidity represents air that is saturated with water vapour.
When the air is dry, water will evaporate, and that takes heat from the wet surface, cooling it down.
When a wind blows, that carries away moist air from next to your skin, replacing it with dry air which soaks up more heat.
Hence a strong wind will reduce your skin temperature towards the 'dew point' of the air.
That is the temperature you must reduce a surface to in order for water to condense from the air, e.g. the ground after a clear night.
This heat is called the latent heat of evaporation, and is quite large. For example, if you boil a kettle and then leave it boiling, it will take a lot of time for all the water to disappear.

Answer 4

Our dry skin and its underlying fat does a good job of insulating us and keeping us warm. However, when it gets wet, through rain or indeed sweating, a clever reaction cools us down. Water will evaporate in dry air. Heat from our skin is conducted into the cooler water, heating it slightly and making it more evaporative. Thus as the wind keeps dry air moving, and the water is cooling our skin, our cooler blood at the skin is losing heat and circulating around our body, cooling us down, while the warmer blood is reaching the skin and losing its heat. This cycle will continue until we respond by protecting ourselves from this environment by getting dressed. If we do not, hypothermia and death follow.

Answer 5

The same reason why our teeth shatters when we're cold-our body is regulating it's basal temperature. As the cool air hit u, it evaporates the water lowering ur body temperature, making u feel cool. You get the same effect if u were sweatin and stepped in from a fan or out to a gust of wind.

Answer 6

The vapor tension of the ambience absorbs the sweat out of your physique and turns it into water vapor there by using giving an adiabatic cooling technique interior of a confinded physique around the guy. Evaporation is a cooling technique in low humidity. everywhere there's a temperature insolation ingredient there's a feeling of cooling; that's essecially real with a wind wherein evaporation occurs freeing latent warmth.

Answer 7

The wind is evapourating water from your skin. Evapouration is a process that requires a source of energy -- since your skin is warm, the evapourated water removes heat (a form of energy) from your skin, causing you to feel colder. Sweating does the same thing, but more slowly which is why it's more difficult to notice.

Answer 8

AS water evaporates, ie, by wind action, it absorbs energy, lowering the temperatrue of the skin. That's also why you sweat when you're hot.

Answer 9

because the moisture is taking away energy or heat away from your body and the wind or moving air speeds up the process

Answer 10

because water is a good absorber of heat but it doesn't conduct heat well. when we are wet the water which is quite colder than our body temperature gives us a cooling sensation because it absorbs heat from our skin.
E.G. :- we feel hot because we absorb energy when we lose heat energy we actually feel cool.

hope you understood