Catkins of the birch. Photo: Adobe Stock / Elena.
The birch pollen season started early this year and a lot of birch pollen can end up in the air during the Easter holidays. Do you have a birch pollen allergy? Then you would do well to take hay fever complaints into account and take your hay fever medication on time. Read here what you can expect.
After a record warm February and it is very likely that record warm March will also cause nature to open much earlier than normal in spring. Also the the first birches blossomed in mid-March. More and more birch trees are blossoming this week and the peak period of the birch pollen season will begin during the Easter weekend. This means that the birch trees are in bloom en masse and if you have a birch pollen allergy you have a good chance of suffering from hay fever complaints during dry periods.
Soft and changeable Easter weekend
It Easter weekend runs smoothly with maximum temperatures of 14-18 degrees. This makes it milder than the normal for the end of March of about 12 degrees. With plenty of moisture in the soil, these are ideal conditions for the birch trees to bloom. The weekend will be changeable with a daily chance of rain, but if it is dry for a few hours in a row, the concentration of birch pollen in the air can quickly increase considerably.
Flowering birch. Photo: Adobe Stock / Stefan.
The highly allergenic birch pollen causes complaints in about half a million Belgians. The ash tree, which spreads moderately allergenic pollen, can also cause hay fever complaints during this period.
Follow our hay fever weather forecast
After Easter, the massive flowering of the birches continues and you may experience complaints during dry periods. Because rain falls regularly, the air is regularly washed clean and the nuisance is not as great as if it were dry for a whole week. The birches are expected to have finished blooming by mid-April. This means you may experience inconvenience throughout the Easter holidays.
When does the grass pollen season start?
Due to the mild weather, the grass is already growing rapidly and the first grass species will not take long to bloom. Only prolonged colder than normal weather can delay the development of the grass somewhat. But with fairly normal temperatures in prospect, early flowering grass species, such as the foxtail, may already be able to spread pollen by mid-April.
Do you have a grass pollen allergy? So take into account an early start to the grass pollen season. Grass pollen is highly allergenic and causes hay fever symptoms in a million Belgians. It is therefore by far the biggest cause of hay fever.
In this hay fever calendar you can see when the different trees and plants cause hay fever complaints on average. Trees and plants not mentioned here cause no or very few complaints.
If it is mild in the second half of April and the top layer of the soil does not dry out, the peak period of the grass pollen season can occur early in May. Normally this is in the second half of May and June.
