It's super windy in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra this Wednesday, and pretty breezy in most other capitals too, with the exception of Perth and Darwin where winds are relatively light.

Sydney has seen wind gusts up to 65 km/h with gusts up to 70 km/h at the airport. Marine wind warnings are in force for the NSW coast, with gale warnings along the far South Coast associated with the strong low pressure system in the Tasman Sea, which you can see on the weather map below.

Canberra has had gusts up to 54 km/h.

Brisbane has had gusts up to 43 km/h, with stronger gusts at the airport.

And Hobart, Melbourne and Adelaide are all a little less breezy, although there are still gusts up to 39 km/h, 26 km/h and 28 km/h respectively in the three cities.

The strong westerly winds are blowing in the wake of a cold front which moved through overnight, and they should ease later this week.

But for now, it's one of those unpleasant blustery days, especially in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra. And that begs the question:

How does wind affect our mood?

Childcare workers, school teachers and parents will tell you that on windy days, kids are harder to handle than usual.

But what about us grown-ups? Is there any truth that we tend to be more moody and irritable on windy days?

• There have been a few stories about this topic in the media in recent years. This one in The Age cited a 2015 US study that found that higher wind speeds were associated with increased levels of depression, as expressed by users on Twitter.
• There was also a 2008 German study which found that strong winds made people more likely to feel irritable, jittery, or distressed.
• There's even a superstition among staff in hospitals that pregnant women are more likely to go into labour when it’s windy.

The bottom line is that while there's no definitive over-arching study directly showing that air rushing between areas of unequal pressure in the atmoshpere (yep, that's what wind is!) leads to certain types of behaviour, anecdotally, it seems most of us feel at least slightly unsettled in various ways on windy days.

Does that description fit you? Does wind fire you up or is it business as usual? Let us know on the Weatherzone Facebook or Twitter pages.

Image: We put this annoyed cat at the bottom of this story because windy days just have that sort of vibe. Source: ManfredRichter on Pixabay.