A wind chill advisory is set for Tampa Bay. Here’s what to expect.
If your Christmas wish was for a cold holiday — well, you got it. And then some.
Beginning on Friday, temperatures will plummet in the Tampa Bay area. By Saturday morning temperatures will likely be in the low 30s near Tampa and even lower in northern parts of the region’s counties.
Mike Clay, chief meteorologist with Spectrum Bay News 9, said it will be windy Friday night into early Saturday morning, which could cause the air temperatures to feel like they’re in the teens to low 20s around the coast.
The arctic blast caused the National Weather Service to issue wind chill advisories across the state, including all of Tampa Bay. The advisory runs from 1 a.m. to 10 a.m. Saturday and wind chill could be as low as 20 degrees.
What is wind chill?
Wind chill is a term that describes how air temperature feels on human skin, according to the National Weather Service. How the air feels is influenced by a combination of cold temperatures and wind. However, the actual temperature you would see on a thermometer doesn’t change.
The National Weather Service has a formula and chart for calculating wind chill with enough numbers and letters to make your head spin. But the gist of it is that it uses temperature and wind speed, and it can be used to determine a person’s risk for hypothermia or frostbite. The Weather Service’s wind chill chart shows how fast a person’s exposed skin can become frostbitten in freezing temperatures.
For example, the low on Friday night will be about 32 degrees going into Saturday morning in Tampa. Clay said wind gusts could reach up to about 30 mph around that time. Looking at the chart from the National Weather Service, 35-degree temperatures with a 30-mph wind gust would feel like 22 degrees.
However, you can get frostbite only if the actual air temperature, not the wind chill temperature, is below freezing, the Weather Service said.
What makes wind chill feel so cold?
The actual air temperature outside does not change, despite gusty winds. It only feels like it does. The reason is that as wind blows across exposed skin, it snatches up the heat we naturally give off and blows it from our bodies, according to the National Weather Service.
The faster wind blows, the faster it steals the heat away from our bodies. The process is similar to how we blow on a hot bowl of soup, the Weather Service said.
Does wind chill affect my plants or my pipes?
No, wind chill does not affect anything besides humans or animals whose skin has been exposed to wind and air temperatures.
“It has nothing to do with the pipes freezing or anything like that, it’s just what it feels like,” Clay said.
The weather service said wind chill can help to quickly cool inanimate objects to the actual air temperatures, but the object’s temperature will never fall below the temperature outside.
What affect will wind chill have on Tampa Bay?
Currently, the National Weather Service’s wind chill advisory is only set for the morning hours on Saturday. However, on Saturday morning gusty winds could make it feel like the temperature is in the 20s or even the teens, according to Clay.
Clay said the gusty winds Saturday morning will die out quickly. Afterward, it will still be cold but not nearly as windy. Low temperatures will be near or at freezing through the weekend across Tampa Bay.
Clay said covering your plants likely won’t protect them in the areas where it will be both freezing and windy this weekend.
“There’s no use trying to cover things, because it doesn’t help,” Clay said. “When it’s just cold wind, the plant doesn’t generate any heat ... especially in our northern counties way up towards Brooksville it’s going to be in the low 20s, so it’s not going to help.”
