REGINA -- After more than a week of extreme cold warnings in Saskatchewan, that polar vortex is going to make its way out of the province. It left one of our viewers curious how the “feels like” temperature is calculated when the forecast is delivered.

Meteorologist Bradlyn Oakes says it is a mathematical formula based on wind speed and temperature developed by Environment Canada. Canada’s wind chill index combines the temperature of the day with the wind speed to express this cooling effect in temperature-like units. That’s’ where you’ll see “feels like -40 for example.

When it’s windy and cold, skin gets stripped of it’s boundary layer which protects you, so it’s the temperature our skin perceives.

Environment and Climate Change Canada issues extreme cold warnings in Saskatchewan when the temperature and/or wind chill are expected to reach minus 40 for at least two hours.