What Is Up With The Allergies In Texas Right Now?

Look, I've lived in a lot of different places and dealt with seasonal allergies all my life. No big deal, right? This year however has been a completely different story.

Let me take you back a bit. I moved to Texas about 8 years ago from Colorado. My allergies there were almost nonexistent. Colorado is a very dry state and that seemed to agree with me. Once I got to Texas though, I noticed a bit of a change.

My first winter in Austin, I started to feel like I was constantly catching a cold or something. I kept pumping cold meds in me and it just never seemed to take the edge off. That was when I found out about cedar fever. Austin is surrounded by the Texas Hill Country, full of these lush and gorgeous trees. Because Texas doesn't really get the winter freeze a lot of places do, the trees and plants are able to pollinate all year long, therefore creating conditions for bad allergies.

I started getting used to it, and by used to it I mean I just started dealing with it. But this year has been a different animal. We actually did get a bit of a true freeze this year, if only for a short while. That allowed everything to kind of die when it would normally be pollinating. I figured hey, this should help things out a bit for me here. Then spring came...and so did an unseasonable amount of rain.

I'm not a weather guru or allergy expert, but I thought for sure the moisture would help with this right? Nope, I was dead wrong. I noticed they were getting even WORSE as the rain continued. Ok, time to do some research. Turns out, rain is TERRIBLE for allergies. The reason behind this is that the rain actually bursts the pollen particles, it doesn't just wash them away. As these pollen particles burst, you guessed it, it pops all that stuff into the air and creates an allergy haven.

I'd like to say we've seen the worst of the rain this year, but it's been a strange year for weather so I'm not ready to declare that. If I were you, I'd keep the allergy meds close. At least we know why they're so bad this year.