Imagine a nice day in the middle of spring: sky is blue and the sun is gaining power every day. You can feel its warmth on your cheeks as you turn your head towards it. The good live…

But all of a sudden a strong wind starts to blow. before you know it all warmth is blown away from you. The sun is still as warm and the temperature is exactly the same but before you can feel the comfort, the warmth is already gone. Even the heating generated by your own body gets lost; you can no longer maintain the warm layer of air around your skin.

The temperature remained but the strong wind gives you the impression that the day is much colder than it is in reality. That feeling is called the wind chill factor, a significant dropping in the experienced temperature on a day with strong winds. It is everyday reality in Punta Arenas, city of whirling winds. This makes field work a lot harder, because the wind chill makes you experience temperatures way below freezing point even when the actual temperature is around 5 °C.

This wind chill is in addition to the pure force of the wind that even shapes trees permanently. Being an important reason why a place on the same latitude as the Netherlands gets conditions that resemble the harsh situation in the north of Sweden. That is, of course, one of the main reasons why we chose this place for our experiment.