Migraine Weather Forecast

Why weather triggers migraines

Weather-related migraine headaches are usually about change rather than any single kind of day. When a front moves through, barometric pressure falls quickly, and the pressure inside your sinuses and inner ear takes a little time to catch up. For some people that lag is enough to tip an already sensitive nervous system into an attack — which is why a migraine weather forecast is really a forecast of movement, not of sunshine or rain.

What researchers think is happening inside is fairly simple to picture. When the air pressure outside drops, the pressure in your sinuses and around the blood vessels in your head no longer matches it, so fluid and pressure shift a little. Those shifts, along with temperature changes, seem to nudge brain chemicals such as serotonin, and the blood vessels in your head respond by tightening and then opening again. That back-and-forth can irritate the nerve endings in the lining around the brain — and irritated nerve endings there are what migraine pain feels like.

The things worth watching are the ones on your sheet. A sharp drop in barometric pressure over a few hours is the classic culprit, and a fast rise afterwards can do it too. High humidity, especially paired with heat, adds dehydration and poor sleep to the picture. Storm fronts bring pressure, humidity and light changes all at once. Wind and glare wear down an already sensitive system, strong heat and hard cold each ask something of you, and a wide temperature swing between morning and afternoon asks your body to adapt faster than it would like.

None of this means the sky is in charge. Migraines caused by weather are common but far from universal: weather is a trigger for roughly 30–50% of people with migraine, and even then it usually needs company — a short night, a skipped meal, a stressful week. That is why this page shows you yesterday alongside today. Ticked next to your sleep, food and stress notes over a few weeks, the pattern either shows up or it does not, and both answers are useful.

How this migraine weather report is built

Your city is matched to a set of coordinates, then hourly readings are pulled from open meteorological services (Open-Meteo, with met.no as a backup) and read in that city's own local time — no account, no tracking, nothing stored about you.

Yesterday's rows are complete, so they arrive as ticks you can copy onto your Daily Ritual sheet. Today's rows are a forecast, so they arrive as time windows to keep an eye on instead. Pressure is shown in hPa, temperature in both °C and °F, and humidity as the day's peak.

If you do not have your Daily Ritual sheet yet to track your weather triggers, you can find it in our Essentials kit.

Want to learn more about barometric pressure and how weather affects migraines? There is a whole chapter on this in our Insight Guide.