You Aren’t Crazy: You Can Feel the Weather

Photo: Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

In every office, there’s always that one person who claims they can feel the weather. Now, Science proves that those anecdotal tales of Grandpa’s creaky knee joints being better than a hurricane siren may be based on fact. The Wall Street Journal confirms joint pain can be correlated to weather change. Although scientists don’t fully understand the details behind whether correlation equals causation, a leading theory is that “falling barometric pressure that frequently precedes a storm alters the pressure inside joints. Those connections between bones, held together with tendons and ligaments, are surrounded and cushioned by sacs of fluid and trapped gasses.” Interesting!

Humans are also not the sole species with the ability to feel the weather. “Tests on animals seem to bear out the impact of weather. In one study, guinea pigs with induced back pain exhibited signs of increased pain by pulling in their hindpaws in low barometric pressure.”

This admission of weather-related pain is advancement from the mid-1990s, when people like the late Stanford psychologist Amos Tversky said, “People’s beliefs about arthritis pain and the weather may tell more about the workings of the mind than of the body.” Workings of the mind being a polite way of stating that these people may just have been crazy.

As there are no joints around mammary tissue, this news doesn’t appear to yet support whether breasts can feel the weather. But Karen, you keep doing you.

You Aren’t Crazy: You Can Feel the Weather