If you live and attend college in Western Pennsylvania, you’ll notice winters that are anything but predictable. The weather usually boasts little to no stability, which can be difficult for students or residents who may be new to the area and aren’t familiar with the patterns.

Right now, the temperature outside where I go to school is 31 with a real feel of 25. The last few days before that, the temperatures were in the 40s and 50s. For most people, winter itself is a tricky thing to handle a few months out of the year, with that same group hating the thought of it coming around, again. While I’m not one of those people, I hate it when the temperature fluctuates this rapidly, sometimes within 24 hours.

My one friend on campus is with me about this “roller coaster” temperature change that we’ve been experiencing since summer and packed it up for the year. He always says that winter needs to decide whether to be cold or not. He always tells me that the winter temperatures make him sick. While the roller coaster ride in temperature changes doesn’t help, the colder end of the spectrum is a virus’ paradise, but not for the reason you’d expect.

“When the weather turns cold, we all run indoors, where air is recycled and we’re often in close quarters with other people and viruses. We all sneeze on top of each other,” Dr. Sorana Segal-Maurer said, who spoke to CNN about this topic. She heads up the James J. Rahal, Jr. Infectious Diseases Division in New York Hospital Queens.

So, what we’re getting out of this is that the true problem is the temperature itself; it causes people to want to say indoors. It is, however, not the cause.

Living in a dorm-type atmosphere exacerbates this problem. We live together, use the same restroom facilities, and are making contact with each other on a daily basis. If one person gets sick, then the possibilities of other people getting sick increases further.

You may notice if you’re living in a dorm or other campus housing, that you and your peers get sick less in the spring than in winter. This makes sense, given the fact the weather is warmer, so people will want to be outside, maybe playing a sport or doing other outside activities with friends. This decreases your chances of catching colds.

“There are a variety of different cold viruses,” Dr. Brian Currie said, who serves as senior medical director of the Montefiore Medical Center, which is also in New York. “It makes sense that there is no one therapy to treat a cold.”

So, there you have it. Two experts from two different institutions give their opinions on whether cold weather is to blame for your latest sniffle. The jury’s reached a verdict, and cold weather’s not guilty.

Source: Chris C. Anderson, CNN; CNN article