Does wind chill only affect living creatures?

Question

To rephrase, if a rock sits outside in 10F weather with -10F windchill, is the rock’s surface temperature 10F or -10F?

In: 4775

Answer 1

Windchill usually means the temperature you feel on bare skin. So only living humans’ exposed skin counts, nothing else. It is “qualia-based”: by what your brain makes of it.

Animals would already experience it differently due to fur and another metabolism. For rocks or any dead material it makes even less sense. However, if you would use a thermometer on a dry rock that had time to reach ambient temperature, you would find that it has the true temperature (10°F in your example). If it was/is wet, then evaporation might get it a bit colder.