That’s just not true, since we do not spend all our time outside walking along exposed ridgelines, so the result that is applicable to that situation is not the most useful piece of information.
The effect that windchill will have is highly variable, so it’s better to give an easily understood baseline temperature and windspeed that allows you to compare to prior weather that you have experienced.
If the windchills that are being given are based on the windspeed at the top of a ridgeline, then the problem isn’t that they’re windchills; it’s that they’re based on the tops of ridgelines. Measure the wind in the places that people actually go, and then calculate the windchill based on that.
Fixed it for you.
An example of just how gullible voters can be, to be led to vote for something that sounds good on its surface, but is, at best badly thought-out.
If there is a chemical nearby, that might pose a threat to your health and safety, you’d like to know about it, right?
That was the premise behind Proposition 65, in California, in 1986. It compels the state to compile a list of chemicals “known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm”; and it requires warning signs or labels anywhere that such chemicals are present.
No distinction at all is made as to whether the chemical is present in a form or amount that actually poses any risk of being exposed or harmed thereby. If any such chemical is present, then there needs to be a warning.
In many cases, such warnings are posted simply to cover the possibility that any such chemicals •MIGHT• be present, even in the absence of any reason to suppose that it might.
As a result, we in California have become so accustomed to seeing and ignoring all these bogus warnings all over the place about fake chemical threats, that if there was ever a genuine, meaningful chemical-based hazard, it would be nearly impossible to effectively warn us of it.
Quoted windchill numbers assume full unsheltered exposure to the wind, because the motivation is to give an extreme number, not a useful one.
People go to a lot of places, and the windchill effect is highly variable. That’s why I think any windchill-corrected number is unhelpful.
If you give two simple numbers - baseline temperature and windspeed - then people can relate those conditions to their experience in the places they actually go. I’m not just talking out of my backside here, I spend a lot of time hiking, and I want straightforward numbers that I can relate to the terrain and exposure and shelter in the places I’m actually going.
They should describe the level of coldness in phrases we can all understand. Like, “Today it will be cold enough to freeze the silver balls off of a brass monkey!” Or “It’s just cold enough to turn your high beams on.”. Things people can relate to.
Everyone that lived survived…and the ones that didn’t live can’t say jack about it. 
And the windspeed is likewise highly variable. Which doesn’t change the fact that the only way that windspeed is useful is if people have some way, whether formulas or experience, to convert it to windchill. People don’t care about the wind itself, unless they’re doing specialized things like flying gliders. They care about how it’ll feel. Which is what wind chill is.
Moderating:
It is strictly against the rules to make any changes within a quote box that wouldn’t be appropriate in a formal quote. (So, you can use ellipses to remove stuff, so long as you don’t change the meaning by doing so.) That includes changes like the one you just made, which are transparent. Please don’t do it again.
Experience - exactly.
We always got by just fine with knowing qualitatively that more wind + exposure means that it’s going to feel colder, and comparing forecast temperatures and windspeeds to our experience.
Making that more quantitatively more precise would be a great idea - but the headline number that the forecasters like to give us does not do that because the windchill effect is so variable.
The two numbers that are more helpful are temperature and windchill. Then I know what to expect my hands to feel like when I wait for the train with my gloves off, so as to read the Dope on my phone, and I also know what it will feel like if every inch of my skin is covered and I am in a sheltered place.
I have no quibble with presenting windchill as useful supplementary information. It’s a valuable concept, and a lot of careful thought and experimentation goes into the calculation.
What I object to is when windchill-adjusted temperatures supplant the primary temperature and windspeed information because broadcasters just want to show extreme numbers to make the weather forecast seem more exciting.
Giving just windchill instead of temperature would, indeed, be obnoxious. But I’ve never seen that done.
Granted some of the warnings reach the threshold of being ridiculous but they aren’t useless. They still permit a company to say; we warned you, it’s right there on the label.
The text generally so small you need a microscope to read it mind you.
But I get your point. It’s a bit like the cry wolf effect.
To move the thread a bit further, next time you’re out driving or walking take note of a lot of the signage you happen across. Many are there to head off litigation, or at minimum are there for the benefit of idiots - those that seem to have no common sense.
And again with litigation. Playgrounds are another example. Kids these days will never be able to proudly recite the tale of the day they had gotten slung from a playground merry-go-round at the same time as puking all over themselves.
Oooooo. Ah, yes, good catch.
Sorry to have alarmed everybody unnecessarily. But, what’s a factor of a few hundred, among friends, right?
I was here when it was passed. The media had influence, as did politicians and various other groups. There are many problems with the proposition process in California, media influence is far from the biggest one.
Is this where I pop up to say that a friend of my brother’s actually DID put an eye out playing with a bow and arrow? This was in the 60’s, mind you, but we didn’t ALL come out of it just fine.
We did archery in the backyard in the 2010s and came out fine. But I did rig up a safety net and everything.
I ensured the kids followed safety first.
Well the next best thing might be for those of us inspired by all of those luminaries to sit around with drinks, debating which group we’d rather sit around having drinks with.
My only concern with the Inklings is that I worry there might be a little more tendency toward racism/sexism/religious fervor than I’d be comfortable with. But, maybe not.
That’s fair, but they would be oh so polite about it. The were mostly Oxford Dons.
Would you prefer the Algonquin Circle including Harpo Marx?
And Dorothy Parker!
I don’t know if “prefer” is the right term. As long as we’re indulging in hypotheticals that bend space and time, let’s attend ALL of these literate get-togethers.