Is it true? No matter what the windchill is, if the real temp. is NOT below freezing, you won't get frostbite?

Question

In other words, if the actual temperature outside is 33 degrees, but it's windy, which might make the windchill 17 degrees, you can't get frostbite, because the actual temp is not below freezing? I wonder if it would make any difference if a person's exposed skin was wet? Thanks

Answer 1

Yes, you will get frostbite.

Answer 2

You won't get frostbite. Like Aculeus said, air (or anything) can only cool you down to the point of its own temperature. Even if you were wet and the air was cold and dry, meaning that water would easily evaporate of your skin, you would still not get frostbite because the warmer than freezing temperature of the wind would replace any heat that evaporation took from your skin. If there is a windchill of 17F it doesn't mean anything is going to freeze if the temperature is above freezing, windchill only indicates how cold it will FEEL, because of how windy it is etc... All this is besides the fact that your skin does not get frostbite at 32F anyways.

Answer 3

Aculeus is correct. The only way this can happen is if there is enough moisture on the skin to evaporate to cool the skin down to below 25 degrees F (this is the actual freezing point of human cells because of the salt content. 32 F is for pure water). It's very rare for this to occur, especially when you consider that the skin is continually supplied with heat. Also, the air would have to be quite dry, otherwise evaporation would be slow.

Experiments in Canada have shown that people's exposed faces could be exposed to windchills of up to -17 degrees F if they were fully clothed (except for their faces!) and yet delay frostbite for indefinite periods (hours or more). If you do that same experiment with a naked person, he might get frostbite at even +10 degrees F, because of vasconstriction.

Answer 4

Technically speaking, since frotstbite is freezing of the actual tissue, then that is correct because the air cannot cool the tissue to colder than it's own temperature. However it still wouldn't be fun to be in such conditions.
If the skin was wet it could make a difference because evaporation is endothermic and therefore could cool the tissue to below the air temperature.

Answer 5

I can only agree with Aculeus. He gave you the full and right answer. As an example to his saying, the carburettor of my small aircraft may experience icing even if the temperature is as high as 20°C. It wouldn't be endothermic, though, but the adiabatic cooling due to the venturi effect of the carburettor.