I have a headache.

This blog brought to you by: Mean Girls.

Karen: Well, I'm kinda psychic. I have a fifth sense.
Cady: What do you mean?
Karen: It's like I have ESPN or something. My breasts can always tell when it's going to rain.
Cady: Really? That's amazing.
Karen: Well, they can tell when it's raining.

Okay I am no Karen, but really I am meteorologically psychic. I can tell when it is going to rain/snow/sleet/do anything else from the sky. Call it a gift, call it pure talent, but I will never unknowingly get caught in a rainstorm sans an umbrella.

How? I get pressure headaches, yes, I am a human barometer. What does that mean? It means every time there is an approaching shift in atmospheric pressure, I have a painful and incurable headache that only goes away once the front has cleared. Lucky me.

This brings me to an important question, which was particularly relevant for me last night. Why is it that thunderstorms and/or major pressure changes only move through at the end of the day? Why is it that the crack of thunder and the streaks of lighting only occur sometime after 4:00 EST?

Sometimes I think that its because Mutha Nay-tcha loves to watch me attempt to function with a pounding headache for the entirety of my day. Joke is on you, Kristin, I like to watch you suffer. Then I gots ta thinking: “Self, the world is not out to get you, there must be a scientific reason as to why fronts only move in during the pm hours.”

So, I researched. (See, I do enjoy continuing my education.)

Ahem.

Thunderstorms, in a [ridiculously oversimplified] nutshell, result from the rapid rising and cooling of warm air from the earth’s surface. As it rises, the air forms clouds, which in turn, condenses into moisture, which in turn, begins to fall. Said moisture creates heat, which then reduces the air’s density, causing it to rise. Here enter unstable atmospheric pressure, which is the perfect breeding ground for, you guessed it, thunderstorms. Once the air can rise no further, it is forced to spread out, and the moisture molecules fuse together and begin to freeze due to the cool temperature. Here enter hail. As the water falls, it continues to hit the strong updraft created by the unstable pressure, which then sends it back up into the cloud. Once the molecule is big enough to break through the updraft, it then falls to the earths surface. Comprende?

Now, why is it that this process only happens in the afternoon? Well my young pupils, now that we know why thunderstorms occur, the answer is relatively simple. Storms occur in the afternoon because the earth’s surface needs hours to create the heat to cause the air to rise into the atmosphere. Early in the day, the earth’s surface temperature is cool, meaning there is no warm air rising to begin the process. Once the sun has heated the earth’s surface, the atmosphere is conducive to forming thunderstorms.

Look! You learned something new, and now you know why I will forever have headaches in the hours building up to the thundershower, which will most likely never come before 4:00 EST, scientifically speaking of course.

This is how I know so much useless information, because I can’t just let universal phenomena remain just that. I always need an explanation. Up next? Explaining why cocktails are called cocktails.