Achoo! This June has been exceptionally sneezy for many, and even those of us who do not normally suffer from hay fever have found ourselves reaching for the tissues. So is the hay fever season worse than normal in the UK this year?
As far as the pollen count goes, the amount of pollen in the air is high, but not exceptional for June in the UK. But what has been different is the abruptness with which the hay fever season arrived. Normally spring slides into summer and plants respond to the increasing warmth, gradually taking turns to bloom. But this year we have lurched from spring to summer. Both April and May were cooler than average and heavy downpours throughout May made it the fifth wettest May on record. The arrival of drier and warmer weather in June led to an almost instantaneous pollen release; especially grass pollen.
Throughout much of May pollen particles were poised and ready to go, but it was not until the warm dry weather in June that they launched into the atmosphere. Almost overnight the number of pollen particles per cubic metre increased from single figures to hundreds. In some areas thunderstorms have added to the misery, lofting even more pollen particles into the atmosphere.
