Barometric pressure and migraine: tracking the association
Weather is one of the most talked-about migraine triggers, and barometric pressure — the weight of the air around you — is the part people ask about most. Temple can't predict an attack from a forecast, and no honest tool should claim to. What a dated record can do is show whether, for you, migraine days and pressure changes tend to travel together.
What the evidence actually says
Both Mayo Clinic and the American Migraine Foundation list weather and changes in barometric pressure among commonly reported migraine triggers. Studies have looked at drops in barometric pressure — the kind that come with approaching storms or fronts — and found associations with attacks in some people, but the findings are mixed and highly individual. That's the honest picture: pressure change is associated with migraine for many people, it is not a proven cause for everyone, and it does not forecast your next attack.
How to spot it in your own record
Weather is a poor thing to reconstruct from memory, because you only remember the storms that coincided with a bad day. The useful move is to log every migraine day with a date, then let the pressure reading sit beside it automatically. Over a few months you can see whether your attacks cluster around falling pressure, or whether they scatter regardless — which is just as valuable an answer.
How Temple surfaces the pattern
Temple includes a WeatherKit pressure module: for each entry it records the local barometric pressure and how it was changing, so every migraine day carries its own weather context without you noting anything. Over time the diary shows your migraine days lined up against pressure, turning a vague 'I think weather affects me' into something you and a clinician can look at. It records the association — it never predicts an attack.
Temple's WeatherKit pressure module attaches barometric pressure and its trend to every migraine day, so any weather association shows up as a dated pattern — never a forecast.
Common questions
- Can barometric pressure predict my next migraine?
- No. Pressure changes are associated with attacks for some people, but that association can't forecast an individual attack, and Temple never tries to. The diary records what happened so any real pattern becomes visible over months, not a prediction.
- Do I have to check the weather myself?
- No. Temple's WeatherKit pressure module attaches the local barometric pressure and its trend to each entry automatically, so your migraine days already carry weather context when you look back.