BUFFALO (WBEN) - You may have noticed that your allergies have been worse this spring compared to years past. According to local experts, that's not just in your head - there's science behind this year's brutal allergy season.
In fact, we can attribute the higher than normal pollen count back to a stretch of abnormally warm weather in March.
"This year, between March 18 and April 2, there was about a 10-day nice setup of warm weather, and even then I saw they were already predicting it was going to be a tough pollen year back in the middle of March because of the warm temperatures," said arborist Ed Dore of Dore Landscape. "That gets the pollen production going, and then we had a wet April, and that really made things go...then we got into May, and it was just very high volume.
"I know that I've been on jobs this year, mainly in May because now we're back to a more mild pollen index, but you could sit there and watch this green fog kind of go across someone's lawn."
Dr. Kathleen Donovan discussed other variables from this spring that have resulted in this sort of perfect storm of bad conditions.
"Tree pollen season usually goes from the beginning of May to about the end of May," she said. "We started a couple weeks early, so it was longer, we haven't had much rain as we're in a semi-drought right now, and rain washes pollen out of the air, so we have high pollen counts that don't get knocked down by the rain."
Donovan also noted that longer and more intense allergy seasons have started to become the norm as opposed to an anomaly.
"Global warming is changing our environment and making allergies worse," Donovan continued. "We've definitely noticed as we're warmer and are having warmer springs and longer seasons, people are more symptomatic."
As we are now well into June, we have surpassed tree pollen season and are in the thick of grass pollen season. Donovan suggests that people who typically get allergies at certain times of the year start medicating to prevent the harshness of the onset of symptoms.
