WEATHER BLOG: Does The Weather Have You Hurting?

Does the weather have you in pain today? Can you feel it in your joints and bones when rain is on its way? Well, there may be some validity to that old wives' tale due to the barometric pressure changes on your body.

Barometric pressure is the weight of the air pressing down on earth. In layman's terms, low barometric pressure usually means rain. When you have low pressure, air parcels are lifted into the atmosphere where they cool and condense as the temperature reaches the dewpoint, creating clouds and rainfall. The opposite happens with high barometric pressure. High pressure is associated with sinking air and usually sunshine. Sinking air warms which helps to evaporate moisture, generally inhibiting cloud formation.

So exactly how might a change in barometric pressure affect your joint pain? Now I'm no doctor, but scientifically speaking... it would make sense that as a storm is moving in causing a change in barometric pressure, it would allow an inflamed joint to swell even more which would translate into pain.

Last year, I took a phone call from a viewer who had terrible knee pain. Snowfall was in the forecast and they told me that they knew it was going to snow because of the severity of their pain. My forecast verified, as expected, and so did the viewer's based off of their knee pain. As someone that suffers from moderate joint pain myself, I can even feel stormy weather brewing. Of course I don't use my joint pain to put together your weather forecasts! I do a thorough analyses of different weather models... but my point is that I get what a lot of you are talking about. The human body can sometimes be a great barometer.