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It’s a pollen explosion,” Weather.com meteorologist Tim Ballisty tells WebMD. “In Atlanta, the pollen count was up in the 5,000s, when 120 is a high level. And other cities in the Southeast, the Midwest, and the Northeast had off-the-charts pollen levels, too.”

What happened? A “perfect storm of conditions conducive to bring pollen into the air,” arborist Peter Gerstenberger, senior advisor to the Tree Care Industry Association, tells WebMD. “It has a lot to do with temperatures over a period of time that can cause a tree to create a lot of pollen. It has a lot to do with wind speed, and it has a lot to do with precipitation.”

This perfect storm, Ballisty says, had several ingredients:

• A long, cold winter dumped huge amounts of snow and rain across much of the nation. Trees got plenty of water, unlike recent drought years in the Southeast.
• Spring arrived late. When it came, it brought hot, dry, summer-like conditions “compressing the pollen season,” according to horticulturist Amanda Campbell of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Ballisty notes that this April broke 1,800 high-temperature records across the nation.
• Spring was summer-like not only because temperatures were unusually high, but because a ridge of high pressure funneled moisture away from the eastern half of the nation for extended periods. Rain washes the pollen from the air. Although pollen levels quickly rebound after rain, dry periods keep pollen blowing in the wind.

Like many others I have found myself sneezing and coughing a lot more right now. The wind is blowing tree pollen. I can’t be outside for long before I begin coughing. A lot of this is the result of the sinus infection I had earlier, which I have been told might be allergies from all the pollen this year. I did some research and found the best time to get checked for allergies is after allergy season. There are too many variables right now to have this checked. Too many different pollens flying around in the breeze. Perhaps when the pollen has stopped blowing around many like me will feel a lot better. Until then we cough, sneeze, and feel rather miserable at times.