How can dogs sense storms

The first sign is usually when your pup seeks some type of shelter. These are signs your dog is taking protective measures for an upcoming storm. Some dogs may bark a lot to warn his pack that bad weather is coming.

Others may like to cuddle up on their owners lap. Dogs that are scared of storms are more likely to seek the comfort and love of their human when they feel that bad weather is approaching. Dogs that are scared of storms are more likely to seek comfort and love of their owner when they sense a storm. Moreover, dogs will pace and move restlessly around a room.

If this is the case, check the forecast. By: Kate Kershner. If you grew up in my household, you would not need to read this article. That's because you would know — as undisputed fact — that dogs and cats and birds and rats can sense a stormy forecast, mostly because a certain matriarchal figure in the household would not let you forget it.

Every time the dog whined endlessly or the cats careened through hallways pursued by imaginary attackers, my mother would sigh heavily and declare that the weather must be changing. Seeing that we lived in the Pacific Northwest — where storms happen regularly — and that our pets were traditionally just shy of wild, my mother could often claim accuracy on her predictions. But were my mother's prognostications coincidence or did she have a decent idea brewing?

Many have claimed that animals — especially dogs — can sense storms coming, and it's not always just people making excuses for their golden retriever's bad behavior. Now, some of the hypotheses for dog behavioral changes aren't crazy at all. They're based on biological differences between dogs and humans that certainly could give canines the upper hand in predicting storms — or even impending disaster. As most of us know, dogs do have a "better" sense of hearing than people, meaning that they can hear much higher and lower frequencies than we can.

And some posit that dogs can hear that distant, low rumbling of thunder before people do, alerting their owners to an approaching storm. Likewise, while we don't know exactly how much better dogs are at detecting odors than humans, we do know they can detect smells in much greater detail, having 20 times more scent receptor cells.

A few clouds begin to gather overhead on what otherwise is a sunny day. You wonder somewhat dreamily whether that thunderstorm Channel 6 had been predicting will actually arrive. Dogs seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to predicting storms. Long before the skies darken and the rain falls, thunderstorm phobic dogs become agitated, fearful, and clingy.

Before we know that a storm is on its way, our dogs may have felt it, heard it, or even smelled it. Canines are more sensitive to drops in barometric pressure than humans. Barometric pressure is the pressure of the atmosphere.

A drop in pressure means that conditions may be ripe for a storm to develop. A dog may learn to associate this pressure drop with the arrival of a storm. Changes in the static electric field may trigger the same anticipation.