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Since You Asked: 'Feels like' temperature depends on wind Monday Jan 16, 2017 at 12:01 AM I was looking at the Weather Channel on www.weather.com, and it said 33 degrees feels like 30 degrees. What does that mean? "Feels like?" Who or how do they determine what it feels like? — Tom, Eagle Point It's all about the wind, Tom. Trust us, we're not just full of hot, er, cold air. Your body produces a thin layer of warm air about it, meant to insulate your skin from cold air, according to meteorologist Jay Stockton at the National Weather Service in Medford. But if you have wind on top of the cold, that warm layer gets depleted. The resulting chill is what it "feels like." "Even a 5 mph wind can lower it," Stockton said. But officials don't just throw out random estimates, either. There's actually a chart. One axis displays actual temperature, and one displays wind speed. For example, if it's 10 degrees and the wind is blowing at about 20 mph, it's going to "feel like" 9 below zero. You can see a similar chart on the Weather Channel website.  (Side note: There's an actual formula that factors into this. You know that dream where you're back in high school and you have a calculus final that's 60 percent of your grade, but you haven't cracked your book yet? That's kind of what we felt like when Stockton started reading it to us.) The craziest disparity Stockton has ever seen when it comes to actual temperature versus wind chill was in Barrow, Alaska. On that day, it was about 35 below zero, but winds blew at about 40 mph. It "felt" more like 80 below zero. "It was pretty brutal," Stockton said. Sheesh. Who needs hot chocolate? We know we do. — Send questions to "Since You Asked," Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; by fax to 541-776-4376; or by email to [email protected]. To see a collection of columns, go to mailtribune.com/youasked. We're sorry, but the volume of questions received prevents us from answering all of them.