At this time of year, the term 'windchill' is used to describe how cold it feels outside. However, some do confuse it for a measurement of the actual temperature.

"Windchill is not a temperature," said Meteorologist Terri Lang with Environment and Climate Change Canada. "It's a measurement of how cold it is or how cold it feels. Some people say, 'oh it's minus 24 but with the wind it's actually minus 40', and we know that that's not the case. The air temperature remains constant, no matter what the wind is. So it just makes it feel like it's minus 40."

As Lang explained, windchill doesn't actually have a measurement unit to it, however, once upon a time, meteorologists used the measurement, 'watts per metres squared'.

"A wattage is a measurement of energy, and per metres squared and metres squared is an area, so it would measure energy loss over an area, so watts per metres squared it used to be that 1600 used to be the critical value and then it started getting lower than that," she shared.

Math, however, isn't everyone's snowsuit.

"We found that people didn't understand it, but it was sure a lot more scientific," she added.

When scientific terminology doesn't suffice to help people understand windchill, what does tend to work is analogy.

"You know when you want to take a sip of hot coffee, you always blow on it first to cool off, so you can take a sip of it?" Lang posed. "Well, it's the same with wind chill. You're just the coffee, right? The wind is blowing on you, and the colder it is, and the stronger the wind, the faster you're going to cool off. So that's what wind chill is, it's actually not cooling the temperature to a different value."

Lang also offered a practical application of the proof windchill is not a temperature.

"If it's plus 2 and there's a 40 kilometre an hour wind making it feel like minus 5, the temperature will stay at plus 2, it will not freeze the water," she said.

In spite of not being measurable in units, the personal, physical experience of windchill provides a quick lesson in dressing warmly and always being prepared. Frostbite, after all, can occur in minutes in this extreme cold.

"[Windchill is] measuring how fast warmth is being taken away from your body," Lang noted. "So that's why we talk about frostbite occurs in minutes, because the temperature is so cold, and if there's a wind, it'll happen a lot faster."

She added dressing in layers benefits us mainly due to the fact that it's the warmth of the air trapped between the layers of clothing that insulates us while enduring the cold weather.