Allergy season will be short but ‘bad’ in Canada this year, experts predict

About one-quarter of Canadians suffer from seasonal allergies, with the hardest-hit provinces being B.C., Ontario and Quebec. The season had a slow start but may soon explode.

A colder start to spring in Canada means a potentially tamer introduction to allergy season, but experts warn that as soon as the weather starts to warm, it may bring an explosion of pollen into the air.

Allergy season usually follows the trend of tree pollen in the spring, grass in the summer and ragweed in the fall. And this year, Global News chief meteorologist Anthony Farnell warned that tree pollen and grass may hit allergy sufferers at once.

“April looks to be colder than normal across a huge chunk of the country, so there probably won’t be an early spring this year,” Farnell said.

“But with the sudden turnaround to summer-like warmth in May, we could get a really bad allergy season in some areas because all types of pollen will be peaking at once from trees, grasses and flowers. It’s something that has been happening more often in recent years especially in some parts of the U.S. when you get unusually warm temperatures for a prolonged period of time.”

About one-quarter of Canadians suffer from seasonal allergies, according to Dr. Anne Ellis, president of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. And the hardest-hit provinces tend to be British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec because of the trees — mainly birch — in the region.

Spring allergies shouldn’t pop up in these provinces until late April, but there is a caveat, she added.

“The exception would be if we had an unexpected sudden warming because that is a signal to the trees for them to really catch up on their maturation and pollination. So if we have a sudden warm-up at any point, expect really high pollen levels whenever that happens to be,” she said.

Pollen counts have been low across Canada so far this year, according to Daniel Coates, director of Aerobiology Research Laboratories.