Strong winds recorded on Saturday over much of southeastern Australia, combined with cool temperatures, resulted in a pretty chilly day.

A strong cold front swept across South Australia and Victoria on Friday evening, and crossed southern New South Wales early on Saturday. Vigorous westerly winds in the wake of the front, and ahead of another front passing on Sunday, brought very high gusts over several regions. In Illawarra, Wollongong registered a wind gust of 80km/h, and Nowra up to 91km/h, on Saturday afternoon.

Cold temperatures with windy conditions can make you feel much colder than what the actual temperature is telling you. This is referred to as wind chill and is given by the apparent temperature or “feels-like”. It takes into account not only the actual temperature but also humidity and wind.

Melbourne reached a cool 14 degrees at 1pm on Saturday. However, due to gusty winds at around 35km/h, the apparent temperature was an even cooler 10 degrees. Adelaide, with similar windy conditions and 16 degrees, felt like it was 13 degrees only.

In addition to strong winds, Sydney experienced low relative humidity on Saturday. This led to a dramatic “feels-like”. At 1pm, the mercury was around a relatively warm 26 degrees. However, sustained winds above 40km/h, gusting around 60km/h, mixed with low humidity resulted in an apparent temperature of barely 17 degrees. This is nine degrees less than the observed temperature.

Winds are forecast to ease later Sunday evening or early Monday morning.