Why We Feel Weather Changes in Our Bones

Nov 21

Written By Michele Edington (formerly Michele Gargiulo)

Some people check the weather app while others simply wake up and feel it. Today my husband, Zak, woke up and his knees ached. He’s younger than me by about six years, so it’s not that he’s getting old (that would mean I’m getting older, which isn’t true), but that he has a sensitivity to the weather changing.

A shift in the air, a soft ache in the knees, maybe even a tug behind the ribs sometimes means there’s a storm gathering somewhere far beyond the horizon, and yet somehow already inside our bodies we seem to know it.

It’s one of those strange mysteries that feels half-magic and half-science, that bizarre moment when the sky changes and the trees sigh and shake their leaves, when your bones tell you about it before the clouds do.

But this isn’t some odd mythology or just your imagination. Your body really does listen to the weather.

The Air Has Weight

When a low-pressure system rolls in, (the kind that brings rain, storms, heavy air, etc) the atmosphere literally presses down on you less. Hence the name.

Your joints are filled with pockets of fluid, collagen, and soft tissue, so under normal pressure, they sit snug and calm.

But when that pressure drops those tissues expand just a little. Not enough to see, but definitely enough for you to feel. A gentle swelling or a tightness is common while a dull ache that moves through your body like a slow lazy tide.

You aren’t imagining this sensation, your body is actually respond something external. Your bones are barometers, whether you asked for that job or not.

Your skin has pressure sensors and your inner ear tracks atmospheric shifts. Our brainstems listens for weather like radar.

When humidity changes, and wind patterns shift, when electrical charge rises in the air before a storm, your nervous system reshapes itself around these cues.

It’s ancient and instinctual and very much the leftover animal inside us who once needed this sense to survive.

We used to navigate entire migrations, hunts, and seasons using nothing more than these tiny signals. (I use the word “we” lightly, I forget where I park my car when I run into stores which my husband endlessly teases me about).

Even now though, in a world of satellites and seven-day forecasts, that quiet sensitivity has never really left us.

Emotional Weather Counts, Too

Here’s the truth most science articles leave out (but I’m not most science writers, I like to pull on the spiritual aspect of life and breathe soul into my science): storms outside can sometimes trigger storms inside.

Low pressure can deepen melancholy, while humidity can heighten anxiety.
Dark clouds can dim the mind just enough to make the world feel heavier than it did yesterday.

Your body doesn’t just respond to rain, it also responds to the idea of rain. You ever wonder why every time the sky starts to look angry you wish you could stay home from work or school and curl up in front of a fireplace (I’m assuming it’s winter here), with some soothing tea and a good cozy book? You’re also not the only one feeling those feelings. Your manager probably doesn’t want to be at work any more than you do at that moment in time.

The sky and the self share a nervous system. We think we’re fragile for feeling weather in our bones, but really, it’s just a sign of how deeply woven we are into this chaotic world.

You’re actually biologically wired for sensing a storm early, you evolved for it.

The ability to be both soft and perceptive and feel the sky shifting and somehow deep in our bones and our souls, we know that change is coming long before the first drop touches the earth.

I believe that sometimes our bodies know the weather even when our mind is too tired to hear it.

Why We Feel Weather Changes in Our Bones

The Air Has Weight

Emotional Weather Counts, Too

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