Weather does seem to affect migraine and chronic pain for some people, but for most the measured link is small or absent, and rain on its own shows no clear link with pain. In a 2017 analysis in the BMJ by Jena and colleagues, diagnoses of joint or back pain were no more common on rainy days across 11,673,392 doctor visits by US adults aged 65 and older from 2008 to 2012. In a 2019 UK smartphone study by Dixon and colleagues, which analyzed data from 2,658 people in 2016 and 2017, rainfall was not linked to pain flares, although humidity, air pressure and wind showed small links.
Weather-sensitive people are a minority, and they differ in what affects them. In a 2015 diary study by Hoffmann and colleagues, 13 of 100 people with migraine in Berlin were measurably weather-sensitive over a year of diaries in 2006 and 2007. A 2022 reanalysis of the UK data by Yimer and colleagues found that the kind of weather that mattered, and the direction of its effect, varied from person to person. None of these studies looked at Seattle on its own, so a diary of your own symptoms and the weather is the most useful evidence about your pattern.
When to see a physician first
Some signs call for emergency or urgent medical care before anything else.
Call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department if you have a headache and any of the following applies, as listed on the UK National Health Service's headaches page:
- You have had a seizure (fit).
- You have numbness or weakness in the body or face.
- The headache started suddenly and is extremely painful.
- You have had a head injury within the last 3 months, for example from a fall or accident.
- You are finding it difficult to speak, balance, walk or remember things.
- You are drowsy or confused.
- You have loss of vision.
- You have a rash that does not fade when a glass is rolled over it.
- You have a very high temperature, a stiff neck, or bright lights are bothering you.
The CDC's stroke signs page also says to call 911 right away for a sudden severe headache with no known cause.
See your physician promptly if you have a headache and any of the following applies:
- You have vision or eye problems.
- The headache is triggered or made worse by coughing, sneezing, bending down or exercising.
- You are being sick (vomiting).
- You have jaw pain when eating or a sore or tender scalp.
- You have any other symptoms you're worried about.
Make an appointment with your physician if you have headaches on 15 or more days a month for more than 3 months, a new kind of headache, or a change in your usual pattern.
A headache that first starts after age 50 is also a reason to see your physician. Back pain has its own emergency signs, which the NHS lists on its back pain page; if any of them applies, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. Any pain that is new, changing or unexplained needs a physician's assessment too.
Weather and chronic pain: what the research found
In two large studies, rain showed no link with chronic pain, and other kinds of weather had small links that varied from person to person.
Rain and chronic pain
A study of more than 11 million doctor visits found no link. In a 2017 analysis in the BMJ, Jena and colleagues matched daily rainfall records with US insurance claims from 2008 to 2012 for 1,552,842 adults aged 65 and older who saw general internists. After adjustment, the share of their 11,673,392 visits with a joint or back pain diagnosis was 6.35% on rainy days and 6.39% on dry days, a difference too small to matter clinically. There was no link for weeks with seven rainy days either, or in any region of the country. Because the study counted diagnoses recorded at doctor visits, it could not measure how much pain people felt, and it looked at rainfall alone.
Humidity, pressure and wind
Humidity, air pressure and wind showed small links with pain flares in a UK smartphone study called Cloudy with a Chance of Pain, which Dixon and colleagues reported in npj Digital Medicine in 2019. Of 13,207 people who downloaded the app between January 2016 and January 2017, 2,658 logged enough data to be analyzed; 83% were women, their average age was 51, and most had arthritis. A flare counted when pain rose two or more categories on a five-point scale from the day before. Higher relative humidity, stronger wind and lower pressure each went with modestly higher odds of a flare, while temperature and rainfall showed no link. On the worst combination of humid, windy, low-pressure days, the odds of a flare day were just over 20% higher than on an average day. The volunteers may already have believed that weather affected their pain, they knew the weather as they rated their pain, and many stopped logging over time; two of the authors cofounded the company that supplied the app.
Who is sensitive to weather
Sensitivity to weather looks individual and uncommon for any one kind of weather. A 2022 reanalysis of the same UK data in PAIN Reports by Yimer and colleagues, covering more than 13,000 participants from January 2016 to April 2017, adjusted for age, sex, beliefs about weather, mood and activity. The model estimated that about 1 in 10 people were sensitive to temperature, 1 in 25 to relative humidity, 1 in 50 to pressure and 3 in 100 to wind speed. The direction differed between people, so the same change could go with more pain for one person and less for another.
The wider research is inconsistent and mostly low in quality. In a 2020 review of 43 studies by Beukenhorst and colleagues, 67% found some association between pain and at least one weather variable, though not always the same variable or direction. Most were small and short, usually following fewer than 100 people for under a month, and the authors concluded that the relationship remains unclear.
Weather and migraine: what the research found
In migraine, diaries find measurable weather sensitivity in a minority of people, and the links found across studies are small. A 2025 meta-analysis in the Journal of Neurology by Li and colleagues, which covered 31 studies up to December 2024, found small associations between migraine attacks and both temperature and air pressure, and no association with humidity.
What the diaries recorded
Diary studies, which compare attack days with ordinary days, find weather sensitivity in a minority of people at most. In a 2015 study in Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, Hoffmann and colleagues had 100 people with migraine in Berlin record attacks every four hours for a year (2006 to 2007). Across the whole group, weather was not significantly linked to attacks. Individually, 13 of the 100 were weather-sensitive after a correction for the many statistical tests involved, a figure the authors think may be an underestimate, and attacks could not be predicted from the weather.
A second diary study found no link that held up. In a 2011 study in Cephalalgia, Zebenholzer and colleagues followed 238 people with migraine near Vienna through 90-day diaries and tested 11 weather measures, and no association survived correction for multiple testing. The participants' own perception of the weather did not match their migraine days, and the authors concluded: "The influence of weather factors on migraine and headache is small and questionable."
Barometric pressure and temperature
Among pressure findings, falls and rapid swings have the most support, although the studies are small and inconsistent. A 2025 systematic review in Cureus by Farah and colleagues gathered 14 studies with 2,696 participants, 87.9% of them women. It found some evidence that pressure drops or rapid swings go with more frequent migraine, although the quality of the studies was limited. In a 2026 Ontario study by Portt and colleagues, 7,418 app users who chose to track their migraine logged 69,808 attacks from 2017 to 2019. Attacks were more likely over the following 0 to 3 days after pressure drops and rises, cold winter temperatures, and higher levels of the air pollutants nitrogen dioxide and ozone.
Naming a trigger and measuring one
Believing that the weather sets off your migraines and being measurably sensitive to it are different things, and surveys find many more people with the first than diaries find with the second. In a 2007 study in Cephalalgia by Kelman, which asked 1,207 headache-clinic patients with migraine about triggers, stress was reported most often, at 79.7%, and weather at 53.2%. A 2018 meta-analysis in Cephalalgia by Pellegrino and colleagues combined 85 survey studies of people with migraine or tension-type headache (27,122 people, published from 1958 to 2015), and a pooled 58% named stress and 41% named sleep. The results varied widely with how people were asked.
The diaries found far fewer weather-sensitive people, 13 of 100 in Berlin, and in Vienna no weather link held up after correction for multiple testing. Some people do react to the weather, and a diary can show whether you are one of them.
Seattle's weather in numbers
Seattle's weather brings frequent light rain, few heavy downpours and dim winters. At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, NOAA's climate normals for 1991 to 2020, which are 30-year averages, record 39.34 inches of precipitation a year and 156.2 days with measurable precipitation (0.01 inch or more). Most of those days are light: 93.4 days a year reach 0.10 inch, 23.4 reach 0.50 inch, and only 5.6 reach 1 inch. These figures come from the airport, so they describe neither downtown Seattle nor Lynnwood exactly.
The wet days gather in winter. December through February averages 15.26 inches over 53.0 wet days, while June through August averages 3.02 inches over 18.8 wet days. November is the wettest month (6.31 inches over 18.4 wet days), January has the most wet days (18.7), and July is the driest (0.60 inch over 4.7 wet days).
Light is scarce in winter too. In NOAA's older records, from March 1965 to December 1983, Seattle received 45% of its possible sunshine over the year, 20% in December and 64% in July.
The grey season
Whether Seattle's grey season affects pain or migraine is an open question. A search of the Europe PMC research database in October 2026 found no study of weather and migraine set in Seattle or anywhere in Washington among its top results. A diary can test the season for you: record whether your sleep shifts as the days shorten, whether you move less in the wet months, and whether flares follow those changes more closely than they follow the rain.
Sleep deserves a column of its own. In a 2021 meta-analysis in Neurology by Stanyer and colleagues, covering 32 case-control studies published through December 2020, adults with migraine reported worse sleep quality than people without migraine, although that design cannot show which comes first.
Care in Washington
I see adults by secure video anywhere in Washington and in person on Fridays at my office in Lynnwood, just north of Seattle. I lead with Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), which I am trained in, and also draw on attachment-oriented psychodynamic therapy informed by ISTDP (intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy), as my approach explains. The practice is private pay; an initial consultation is $325 for 60 minutes and ongoing sessions are $265 for 60 minutes, with full details on Services and fees.
Practical steps
A diary is the most direct way to learn whether the weather plays a part in your migraines or pain. The UK's NICE guideline on headaches recommends keeping a headache diary, and a pain diary can serve the same purpose.
To test the weather, write down each day how you feel and what the weather did (rain, temperature, humidity and whether air pressure was rising or falling), including the days without a flare. After several weeks, check whether flares landed on days with a particular kind of weather more often than on other days. A forecast can help you plan a demanding day, but it cannot tell you whether an attack will come, because in the Berlin diaries attacks could not be predicted from the weather.
Steady sleep and daily routines through the dark months are worth protecting. Lifestyle and trigger management is "an essential aspect of migraine treatment," according to the 2026 migraine prevention guideline from the American Academy of Neurology and the American Headache Society. The same guideline says physicians should offer preventive treatment at 4 or more migraine days a month. If your attacks are that frequent, ask your physician about prevention as well as treatment for the attacks themselves.
Behavioral treatments can sit alongside that medical care, with a modest average benefit on low-certainty evidence. A 2025 meta-analysis in Headache by Treadwell and colleagues pooled 50 randomized trials in adults (trials from 1975 to August 2023). Relaxation training, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and similar treatments led to about 1 fewer migraine day a month than control conditions.
When to see a psychologist
Consider seeing a psychologist when worry about the forecast starts to shape your plans, when flares seem to come with poor sleep, stress or low mood, or when you want skills to use alongside your medical care. A psychologist works on what you can influence between flares, such as stress, sleep and the feelings that build up around pain, and that work happens alongside your physician's care. I work with adults who have chronic pain or migraine and chronic headache. Separate posts cover whether therapy can help migraines and what pain science says about chronic pain.
Questions about weather, migraine and chronic pain
What weather makes migraines worse?
No single kind of weather makes migraine worse for everyone. Pressure drops or swings and temperature have been linked to attacks, but the links are small and inconsistent, and only 13 of 100 people in the Berlin diary study (2006 to 2007) were measurably weather-sensitive.
How to treat weather migraines?
Treatment starts with your physician, because migraine is a headache disorder that a physician diagnoses from the pattern of attacks, as the International Headache Society's classification sets out. Your physician can discuss treatment for attacks and, if they are frequent, preventive treatment. A diary can show whether the weather plays a part, and behavioral treatments offer a modest average benefit on low-certainty evidence.
What is the biggest trigger for migraines?
Stress is the trigger people with migraine name most often. In a 2007 study of 1,207 headache-clinic patients with migraine, stress was reported most often (79.7%) and weather fourth (53.2%). These are perceived triggers, and diaries find measurable weather sensitivity in far fewer people.
What is worse, high or low barometric pressure?
Low and falling pressure has more research support as a trigger than high pressure, but the links are small. Lower pressure went with modestly higher odds of a pain flare in the UK app study, and an Ontario app study linked both pressure drops and rises to migraine attacks.
Why am I so sensitive to barometric pressure?
What makes one person sensitive to pressure is not clear, and such sensitivity is uncommon. In a 2022 reanalysis of UK app data from more than 13,000 people with chronic pain (January 2016 to April 2017), about 1 in 50 were sensitive to pressure, and their underlying pain conditions did not clearly explain who was.
Does barometric pressure affect arthritis pain?
Barometric pressure may affect arthritis pain slightly for some people. In the UK app study (2016 to 2017), where most of the 2,658 people analyzed had arthritis, lower pressure went with modestly higher odds of a pain flare.
Why does my chronic pain get worse when it rains?
For most people, rain itself does not seem to be the cause. A 2017 analysis in the BMJ found joint or back pain diagnoses no more common on rainy days across 11,673,392 doctor visits by US adults aged 65 and older from 2008 to 2012. In the UK app study, rainfall was not linked to flares, although humidity, low pressure and wind showed small links.
How can I relieve pain caused by barometric pressure?
Start by checking whether pressure is part of your pattern, with a daily diary of pain and weather kept for several weeks. Your physician can use what you find to plan for flares with you, and a psychologist can work alongside that care on stress, sleep and how you respond to flares.
If flares, or worry about the next one, are shaping your days, a free discovery call is a short conversation about what is going on and how I work.
About the author
Joel Jin, PhD, is a licensed psychologist in Washington who works with adults with chronic pain, migraine and chronic headache. He sees clients by secure video anywhere in Washington and in person on Fridays in Lynnwood. He is Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed articles, and a coauthor of two books on deliberate practice from the American Psychological Association.
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