What the föhn?

It's cold - again. This weather is tiresome. But a few short weeks ago the sun showed its bright beautiful face to the world in Central Europe, melting the snowy ground in one day. The skies were a bright blue, the clouds looked like cotton candy, and it was seemingly delightful ... seemingly.

As I stood, arms up, welcoming my soular sibling to kiss my face, I was struck with the most excruciating headache. In the days to follow the headaches came on stronger followed by dizziness, blurred vision, nausea and this odd ongoing vibration throughout my body - as if Charlie Brown's teacher crawled into my brain and spoke for a week straight.

I was days away from committing myself to a mental institute when I read about föhn.

In a nutshell – föhn winds are warm, dry winds that descend from the lee slope of a mountain range. (In this case - the Alps). These winds are notorious for rapid temperature rise and their desiccating effect – raising temperatures up to 30 degrees Celsius in a matter of hours. Hours! Celsius!

This bad news breeze causes headaches and migraines, amongst other ailments to thousands of surrounding residents.

It seems that there's a relation to the vibrations caused by the waving airstreams. The vibrations prickle the auditory organs, irritating the nerve systems - a nasty and problematic side effect of a wondrous phenomenon of nature.

Additionally, suicide and accidents increase by 10 percent during föhn winds.

Awesome!

Oddly, this weather had no effect on Jeremy. My irritability on the other hand ... did.