Barometric Pressure Fluctuations Strongly Connected With Wacked-Out Kid Behavior

I can’t tell you how thankful I am that we fared so well during Hurricane Matthew. As a weather geek, I followed www.facebook.com/VirginiaWeatherNetwork and www.facebook.com/WxSynopsis closely on my phone. Both these sites gave pretty awesome forecasts. They have been a huge part of my weather education as well. I’ve learned quite a bit about atmospheric conditions and other meteorological factoids from these folks. They all kept telling us to monitor the storm carefully, even as the Hurricane Center predicted that it would loop east and then south. Due to the advisories from VWN and WxSynopsis, many people in North Carolina and Virginia were not terribly surprised when the wind began screaming on Saturday. My thoughts and prayers go out to all others along the East Coast dealing with stranding flood waters, trying to salvage what’s left of their property, and sitting in the dark. The only upside to these long power outages is that those folks can’t watch the train wreck of a Presidential debate happening tonight. But I digress…

Today, I’d like to give a shout-out to all those parents cooped up with children who haven’t had an energy bleed off in a couple of days. As an educator, I have always known that fluctuating barometric pressures greatly affect the way kids behave. My colleagues and I have years of collective experience with this, but now that I can watch weather conditions deteriorate and the pressure drop through weather pages on my phone, I can now prove that this trend is true. I have blurry photographic evidence to prove that crap gets real when the barometric starts to drop below 1000.

  1016 mbs: Saturday night, Lil’ P. and Lil’ K. decided to play doggie salon. Since the dog was foul-smelling and had to be sheltered in the living room, I didn’t argue. They enlisted my help to give the dog a bath. Said dog was unimpressed.

1010 mbs: Soon after the bath, the children felt like a clean dog needed a tutu. Said dog grew downright edgy and ran upstairs. When a horrific smell began to emanate from the direction of Lil’ P’s room, I knew we’d worried the poop out of the dog. I got things cleaned up by the time we dropped to 1007 mbs.

1006 mbs: Why is everyone playing soccer in the living room?

1002 mbs: My daughter disappeared to the bathroom to have a moment. My son didn’t think her absence was necessary. This is how I found him in the floor.

Luckily, we wrangled everyone off to bed, including the dog, before the storm got real and the barometer really plunged. I’m not sure what would have happened had we enjoyed a few more daylight moments together. So the next time some major system bears down on your neck of the woods, remember my pictures. Check out my preps from the last post at https://wp.me/p7KE1n-51. This is serious business. Whatever you do, don’t blow off a teacher again when he or she tells you the barometric is making the students nuts. Because she’s right. And I have proof. You’re welcome.

This post has been linked to Best of the Blogosphere #92.