Grass pollen season is here folks, and it is already starting to absolutely whoop Victoria’s ass. Sorry Melbourne, but it looks like you have one more thing to worry about.
Depending on where you live, you’re going to have a very different experience with the Hayfever seasons that are coming our way, but the important thing to note is that they pretty much escalate in intensity for everyone on October 1st, which is… fuck.
As I sneeze my way through writing this very sentence, it is important to note that the really intense period of grass pollen season is pretty short, but is at its most ballistic in Melbourne. Sorry, y’all.
Between October and the end of December, Melbourne gets a pretty high pollen count that can potentially cause thunderstorm asthma and intense hayfever symptoms.
What the absolute fuck is thunderstorm asthma? Well, I’m glad you asked. This scary-sounding phenomenon is caused by grass pollen bursting into small particles during a thunderstorm, which can trigger severe and even life-threatening asthma is thousands at a single time.
When strong winds whip up the grass pollen from pastures into city areas, and then a storm rolls around, that’s how we get this crazy situation that could potentially happen every year given the right circumstances.
So yeah, that pretty much covers it. More reason to stay inside.
For Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra, well we get grass pollen at a low-moderate level all spring, but things get worse for us when the summer comes around.
Perth and Darwin, sorry to say but you get the stuff at a low level all year long, with the intense grass pollen season kicking off in summer and early winter.
Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer, Professor Allen Cheng gave out the warning of an incoming wave of batshit thunderstorm asthma sweeping across the state at today’s daily COVID-19 press conference.
Let’s just say my nose thanks me in advance for not being in Melbourne.
“The period from October to December is a time that epidemic thunderstorm asthma can occur and this is a result of high levels of grass pollen, particularly ryegrass in the air,” he said.
“When that is combined with certain thunderstorm conditions, particularly high winds, then that can lead to thunderstorm asthma.”
So uhhh… yeah. Let’s just all agree that this year won’t be very much fun for us until it’s over, *sneezes*.
