Article
Is 29.95 barometric pressure high or low?
Neither — 29.95 inHg (1014.2 hPa) is normal. It sits a hair above the standard atmosphere of 29.92 inHg (1013.25 hPa) and comfortably inside the normal band of 29.68–30.12 inHg (1005–1020 hPa), as long as it is a sea-level reading.
That last condition matters, and so does what the pressure is doing. Both are covered below, after a lookup table for every reading from 29.50 to 30.50 inHg.
Where 29.95 sits on the scale
This site reads every barometer number against five fixed pressure zones — very low, low, normal, high and very high — defined in sea-level hPa and identical for every city. Normal runs from 1005 to 1020 hPa, which is 29.68 to 30.12 inHg at the site’s conversion of 1 hPa = 0.02953 inHg.
At 1014.2 hPa, 29.95 inHg is 0.03 inHg (about 1 hPa) above standard atmosphere and nowhere near either edge of the normal band. In the language of a barometer dial, it is an ordinary reading: neither the low associated with unsettled, wetter weather nor the high associated with settled, clear conditions.
Those cut points are conventions, not laws of physics. Pressure zones are a long-standing way of reading a barometer, and the exact boundaries vary between sources. What this site guarantees is that they are the same boundaries on every page — so “normal” here means “normal by this scale,” and a reading 0.01 inHg either side of a boundary is a rounding difference, not a change in the weather.
Lookup table: 29.50 to 30.50 inHg
Sea-level readings, in 0.05 inHg steps. hPa values are converted at 1 hPa = 0.02953 inHg and rounded to one decimal place.
| inHg | hPa | Zone | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| 29.50 | 999.0 | Low | Unsettled; cloud and precipitation more likely |
| 29.55 | 1000.7 | Low | Unsettled |
| 29.60 | 1002.4 | Low | Unsettled |
| 29.65 | 1004.1 | Low | Just below the normal band |
| 29.70 | 1005.8 | Normal | Low edge of normal |
| 29.75 | 1007.5 | Normal | Lower half of normal |
| 29.80 | 1009.1 | Normal | Lower half of normal |
| 29.85 | 1010.8 | Normal | Slightly below standard |
| 29.90 | 1012.5 | Normal | Just under standard atmosphere |
| 29.95 | 1014.2 | Normal | Just above standard atmosphere |
| 30.00 | 1015.9 | Normal | Slightly above standard |
| 30.05 | 1017.6 | Normal | Upper half of normal |
| 30.10 | 1019.3 | Normal | Just under the high boundary |
| 30.15 | 1021.0 | High | Settled, drier, often clear |
| 30.20 | 1022.7 | High | Settled |
| 30.25 | 1024.4 | High | Settled |
| 30.30 | 1026.1 | High | Settled |
| 30.35 | 1027.8 | High | Settled |
| 30.40 | 1029.5 | High | Just under the very-high boundary |
| 30.45 | 1031.2 | Very high | Strong anticyclone; cold, stable air |
| 30.50 | 1032.8 | Very high | Strong anticyclone |
The readings people ask about most
29.92 inHg
Normal — this is the standard atmosphere itself, 1013.25 hPa, and almost exactly the middle of the normal band. It is the reference value every other reading on this page is measured against.
29.88, 29.89 and 29.9 inHg
Normal. 29.88 inHg is 1011.9 hPa, 29.89 is 1012.2 hPa and 29.9 is 1012.5 hPa — between about 0.02 and 0.04 inHg (0.8–1.4 hPa) below standard. So no, 29.88 is not low pressure; it is about 0.20 inHg (6.9 hPa) clear of the low zone.
29.8 and 29.83 inHg
Normal. 29.8 inHg is 1009.1 hPa and 29.83 is 1010.2 hPa: inside the band, in its lower half, a little closer to the low boundary than to the high one.
29.7 inHg
Normal, but only just. At 1005.8 hPa it sits about 0.8 hPa (0.02 inHg) above the 1005 hPa / 29.68 inHg line where this scale’s low zone begins. If it is still falling, the next few hundredths will take it out of the normal band.
30.12 inHg
Exactly on the line. 30.12 inHg is 1020.0 hPa, the value this site uses as the boundary between normal and high. Calling it one or the other would be false precision: at two decimal places, 30.11 and 30.13 differ by a rounding step, not by the weather. Read it as “the top of normal, the bottom of high.”
The number matters less than the change
A single reading tells you where pressure is. How fast it got there is a separate question: a large 24-hour move is the kind of pressure change that pressure-sensitive people commonly report as a trigger. This site counts a swing day as one with a 24-hour change of at least 0.18 inHg (6 hPa) in either direction, and a big-swing day at 0.30 inHg (10 hPa). Those cut points are conventional bins from the pressure-and-headache literature, not clinically validated thresholds.
The same 29.95 can mean very different things depending on where you are. In Miami, the steadiest of the 50 cities on this site, 90% of hours fall between 29.87 and 30.21 inHg (1011.5–1023.0 hPa), the top 5% of 24-hour changes reach only 0.14 inHg (4.6 hPa), and there are 19.8 swing days a year — last of 50. A 29.95 there is most likely the middle of a quiet stretch. San Diego is nearly as calm, at 35.4 swing days a year.
In Denver, the top 5% of 24-hour changes reach 0.50 inHg (17.0 hPa), and the city logs 281.6 swing days a year — first of 50, against a national median of 180.7. A 29.95 there can easily be a waypoint in a fall of that size. Colorado Springs (279.6 swing days) and Boston (257.6) are close behind. Because the 6 hPa line is crossed on about 77% of Denver days, the big-swing count is the sharper comparison: 169.8 a year in Denver, 171.6 in Colorado Springs, 158.7 in Boston, against 3.2 in Miami. One caveat: sea-level reduction somewhat inflates apparent variability at altitude, which is part of why the two Front Range cities top the list.
The research points the same way. A 2011 study of 28 migraine patients in Japan found migraine frequency rose when pressure fell by more than 5 hPa over 24–48 hours, but found no association with monthly mean pressure. That is one small study, and other studies have found no association between pressure change and migraine; effect sizes are modest and individual sensitivity varies widely. A single number like 29.95 is the wrong unit of analysis; the trend around it is closer to the right one.
Is your 29.95 sea-level or station pressure?
Every number on this page, and every comparison on the city pages, is sea-level-reduced pressure — what weather reports quote. A barometer showing raw station pressure reads lower, and the gap grows with altitude.
Denver makes the size of that gap concrete. At 1,615 m, its mean sea-level-reduced pressure is 29.97 inHg (1014.8 hPa); its mean station pressure is 24.74 inHg (837.7 hPa) — about 5.23 inHg (177 hPa) lower. A raw station reading of 29.95 inHg in Denver would sit 5.21 inHg (about 176 hPa) above the city’s average station pressure — extraordinarily high.
So the test is simple. If you live well above sea level and your device shows something near 29.9 or 30.0, it has almost certainly been corrected to sea level, and the table above applies. If it shows something far lower, it is displaying station pressure, and the zones on this page do not apply to it. Every city page lists its mean station pressure next to the sea-level figures so you can check which one your device matches; for a town that is not one of the 50, use the location lookup.
What 29.95 does not tell you
The figures above come from Open-Meteo ERA5 hourly reanalysis for 2015–2024 — a model reconstruction constrained by observations, not a single station’s barograph — at each city’s centroid. They describe typical behavior, not your street. And a normal reading says nothing about whether pressure is about to move; for that, the live chart and outlook calendar on any of the 50 city pages are the place to look.
Pressure-sensitive people commonly report a change in pressure as a trigger, and falls are the direction most often described in pressure-sensitivity reports. The methodology page sets out how this site handles that association and its limits.
Pressure change has been statistically associated with migraine onset in some people and not in others; effect sizes are modest and individual sensitivity varies widely. Nothing on this page predicts a headache, diagnoses anything, or is medical advice. If migraine is affecting your life, that is a conversation for a clinician.