Tracking Barometric Pressure Using Roof Sensor

Question:

I’m sensitive to barometric pressure changes – they can cause migraines, nausea and vomiting, ear ringing, and dizziness. This may be partly due to my jaw joints being oddly connected, causing any change in my blood pressure to cause swelling and problems. I’ve been called a weather witch by many people, because I can predict a storm, when it’ll be due, and usually the intensity with eerie accuracy – because of my symptoms when there’s a sharp drop in pressure that precedes many notable storms.

I find that I get uncomfortable under 1000 MBs and use a local university observatory to track pressure stats. They’re an excellent resource but their reporting is limited. Here is their site: https://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/wstat/index.htm

I don’t like most weather stations reporting of pressure because they often use aggregate data over a large area and their updates and resources are poor.

Since Wednesday, September 25, I have been in barometric hell with non-stop belching nausea and everything else mentioned above. It’s the worst episode I’ve had in just shy of 40 years of life and I’m desperate to understand.

Near as I can tell, there’s been an absolutely massive low pressure system over my area near Toronto Ontario for days and it’s been especially odd since there’s been no rain and mostly sunny skies, traits that I attribute to high pressure systems. Hurricane Helene is to the south currently stalled over Tennessee. Rain may come in early Sunday and I hope to god a high pressure system comes immediately behind.

We’ve been in the 990s for days and it keeps dipping by 5 mb or more throughout the day, only for it to crawl back up overnight (not breaking past 998, much less 1000), to get knocked down again.

What are we experiencing here, why, and what can I look for to see a glimmer of relief?

Answer:

I empathize with you, my fellow human barometer (though I love weather witch too). Headaches, dizziness, and pain have been my companions during turbulent seasons like fall and spring for the past 42 years, as the jet stream (and the low pressure systems) overall shifts seasonally. From what I understand, jaw joint connection (especially if the major blood vessels and nerves are involved) can indeed cause some issues due to rapid changes in barometric pressure – I had a craniotomy to remove a large skull tumor near the trigeminal nerve that nearly broke through my ear canal, further sensitizing the area and leading to dizziness when pressure changes.

Probably the best climate for these conditions is the desert, further south, where the weather is more consistent, like San Diego, California. Canada in the fall must be rough for you! It’s hard enough for me in Oklahoma, but further north, you experience the earliest clashing of cold polar air and warm, humid air – and often in early fall, the cold air mass doesn’t reach us, just a wind shift change, as it mixes with daytime heating at the surface.

While I’d normally say that a university weather station is ideal (especially versus the usual consumer-grade weather stations that many weather enthusiasts use), TAO says that it’s located at the top of a building at 61m – the pressure will always be lower compared to the standard max height of 10m for a pressure sensor due to stronger winds as you go up through the troposphere (lowest layer of the atmosphere and where most of our weather occurs). Pressure decreases rapidly with elevation, changing 1.0 millibar (mb) with every 32 feet (~9.8 m) at sea level. I’m guessing that the TAO pressure sensor can be useful for solar and atmospheric studies, but it won’t give you the most accurate picture of the weather conditions near the ground where you are.

TAO also says: “Please note that the wind sensor is installed on the south east corner and will be influenced by obstructions on the roof (astronomical domes, radio antenna and building itself).” The pressure data are also not standardized to sea level pressure, so the difference in pressure at the ground vs at the top of the building will probably be more than 6.25 mb on average.

As to why this can cause issues with the accuracy of the pressure readings, check out this in-depth technical article (if you’d like a thorough analysis on pressure instruments, see Chapter 3): http://www.weather.gov/media/epz/mesonet/CWOP-OfficialGuide.pdf Simply, these obstructions can cause turbulence that affects the pressure, potentially dropping the pressure even further and appearing like the pressure is rapidly changing when it may not be fluctuating much in the area at the ground.

I recommend bookmarking your local forecast office weather station or aviation weather observation systems (AWOS) at your airport, which is held to the WMO standards (World Meteorological Organization): https://weather.gc.ca/en/location/index.html?coords=43.655,-79.383

The best weather station for you to check would be one that is ideally sited with no obstructions near you, everything to WMO standards, and recalibrated periodically to the highest standards. Most states and provinces can’t afford to do that on a wide scale in a dense station network, unfortunately. I am lucky here in Oklahoma, as we have 120 regularly-calibrated, gold-standard research data weather stations through a joint project by our two state universities: The Oklahoma Mesonet. Even so, there’s only 1 station per county, still not granular enough to know the exact conditions at my house. A quick search showed that Toronto has its own Mesonet, but I’m not sure if you live anywhere near a site.

I’m not familiar with Canadian weather data options online and a quick search didn’t bring up live surface weather observing station maps like we have in the States, so I’m not sure what other options are near you. I did see climatology/historical weather information at https://climate.weather.gc.ca/historical_data/search_historic_data_e.html, but I’m not sure how long it takes for the information to be uploaded to the site.

As for experiencing low pressure systems with few clouds: that can happen when there’s not enough moisture in the lower to mid atmosphere (common during a drought), or not enough lift and instability to boost the surface air where it can cool and condense with height.

Tracking Barometric Pressure Using Roof Sensor

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