anyone know how they figure out wind chill temp or even how hot it feels with humidity. thank you

I believe it was in the late 40's early 50's the Army made a metal 'crash test dummy'. Within the dummy they had temperature sensors and heaters. They measured how many watts of energy were needed to keep their dummy at 98.6F at various temperatures in a cooler. (no wind). They then put the same dummy in a wind tunnel and measured the difference bewteen moving at at temperature x.. at wind speed y. The equations are messy and they published tables.

Most recently they've changed the tables because of where they measured the wind speed.
The old way the wind speed was determined at higher level than it is now close to the ground where we are. If you here a -30F windchill the warnings today are more 'real'. The good news is that we won't see those warnings as often.

Windchill does not impact your car's engine or battery.. They'll cool off more quickly but they don't get colder than the actual temperature.

For heat index it's the opposite. We perspire to rid our body of heat. High humidity slows that process down so we 'feel warmer'. A breeze helps the process and again we feel cooler.

Neither scale takes into account the amount sunshine.

The National weather service website will have the gritty details of the equations if you're interested.

The NWS has a little different story. I'd bet is more accurate than mine.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/windchill/

Here's their heat index calculator too.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/jkl/?
n=heat_index_calculator


My English teachers are shuddering. I should have said hear instead of here on my previous post..

thanks for the answer...sorry I didn't thank you sooner....we were off line for a week...thanks again!!!