Relief for sneezin’ season
WHILE the dry expanse of northwest Victoria is hurting farmers, it is expected to spell good news for hayfever and asthma sufferers heading into the official start of the pollen season.
University of Melbourne Associate Professor and Melbourne Pollen Count co-ordinator Ed Newbigin and his team turn on their instruments around the state on Monday and are predicting “lighter than normal” pollen conditions in Geelong and Melbourne to end the year.
Prof. Newbigin said the recent dry climate would generally be good news for hayfever and asthma sufferers.
“Simply put, because it’s been a dry year in the pasture grasses across western Victoria, the sources of much of the city’s grass pollen are in below average condition coming into the grass pollen season,” he said.
“But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any bad days for hayfever sufferers and asthmatics this year.
“It means we’re expecting the 2018 sneezin’ season to have fewer bad days and maybe even end a little earlier.”
The expectation is based on the lack of landscape green- ness, particularly in northern Victoria, as revealed in satellite data yielding a Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) measurement.
“The anomaly map shows not so much a map of greenness but of brownness,” Prof. Newbigin said. “That’s because landscape greenness in Victoria is well below average for this time of year.
The latest NDVI maps for western Victoria show some of the worst levels of vegetation brownness anomaly for this time of year since the mid-1990s.
But hayfever and asthma sufferers should still be aware of the very real threat of “thunderstorm asthma” events.
The Melbourne Pollen Count has charted rainfall and pollen correlations since 1991 and found episodes of thunderstorm asthma — days with high grass pollen and a thunderstorm, followed by a sudden increase in admissions to metropolitan hospitals by people with respiratory problems — can happen in any conditions.
“Thunderstorm asthma can occur in a wet year with lots of grass pollen or in a dry, light year,” Prof. Newbigin said.
“All it needs are the right conditions.”
Deakin University Associate Professor Cenk Suphioglu, who leads the Deakin AIRwatch team working alongside University of Melbourne researchers, said grass was “opportunistic” and could grow quickly and warned hayfever sufferers and asthmatics to not be complacent.
Thunderstorm asthma events took place in late October and early November 2009, at the tail end of a severe drought when Geelong received half its average annual rainfall. Six incidences have occurred since 1991.
While pollen is set to be on the low side, asthma sufferers also have the added threat of dust storms being more likely to strike the region, with weather forecasters on high alert considering dry conditions in Victoria’s northwest.