Barometric Pressure Forecast for Olean, New York
Barometric pressure forecast for Olean, New York — in the Allegheny River valley of Cattaraugus County, in the Southern Tier near the Pennsylvania line. See current barometric pressure and what it means for weather-sensitive people.
Download Pressure Pal to track barometric pressure and get migraine alerts for Olean and your area.
Pressure and weather in Olean
Olean sits at about 1,450 feet on the floor of the Allegheny River valley, hemmed in by the steep dissected hills of the Allegheny Plateau that rise another six or seven hundred feet on either side. It lies roughly fifty miles southeast of Lake Erie, which is close enough to matter enormously in winter. When cold air streams southeast across the relatively warm lake, it picks up moisture and then runs into the rising ground of the plateau, which forces it upward and wrings out heavy snow well inland from the shoreline. Olean regularly records snowfall totals that rival the lake shore itself, and these bands can sit over one valley for hours while the next is clear. The barometric signature of lake-effect snow is deceptive: the setup requires cold northwesterly flow behind a departed low, so the reading is usually rising steadily while the heaviest snow falls. The larger pressure movements come from the Great Lakes storm track proper, with lows crossing from the west or curving up from the Ohio Valley and producing falls of twenty to thirty hPa. The valley also pools cold air on clear calm nights, holding frost and fog on the floor while the hilltops stay milder.
What this means for you
Here the heaviest snow often arrives on a rising barometer, which reverses the usual intuition. A migraine tracker app logging continuously through a lake-effect week makes that relationship visible.