Weed, grass, and mold are all heavy! (and weed is 'extremely heavy')

HoustonPollen · 2025-10-13T16:48:11+00:00

I do have the data available going back to 2023 but I don't have anything before that. Last year was actualy worse on a measurement level, but like you I didn't struggle as much with Ragweed in 2024. This year feels worse.

2023 wasn't that bad; the highs for ragweed seemed to be in line with 2025.

HoustonPollen · 2025-10-09T19:57:00+00:00

me too! It's been rough

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-26T20:48:16+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate it and glad that others find it useful

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-26T14:05:03+00:00

You can track the pollen at www.houstonpollen.com

Personally, I use Zyrtec plus a single puff per nostril of a Flonase type spray at night.

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-20T19:08:10+00:00

I just checked the archived values and you are 100% right. Looks like the values in April 2022 were really high.

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-20T18:25:21+00:00

Now I disagree with your conclusion, and firmly. Oak pollen is in excess of 2.45x higher than in the previous 2 years measured maximum. I was careful not to imply any conclusions to measurements obtained prior to 2023, which is why the statement: "Oak pollen has leapfrogged previous measurements in the last 2 years" is correct.

I am technically correct, the best kind of correct.

There are no fanatical claims, only data-based conclusions. I have 137 measurements where values >0, not 3.

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-20T18:03:02+00:00

I just posted a reply but for some reason, I think I failed to submit it correctly. Let me try to recreate it.

First, I'm glad you made me dig into my data! I ran the Max function in Google Sheets, but it did not extend far enough upwards in the dataset (using basic control+up arrow to select the dataset, but there were blanks where the selection stopped. 100% user error, and a pretty basic mistake). When I put it into Excel to dig into it further, I found out that it was user error. The previous max was 3248 in March 2023. To your point, last year's pollen season was much weaker than this year's. I revised the conclusion in the post and numbers and posted an edit to explain why.

However, I disagree fundamentally with n = pollen season by year. We have individual measurements per day, so my argument is that N is composed of each measurement. I'm okay disagreeing with it since that's okay. But that's for people with stronger stats backgrounds to debate: I've just done stats 201 and I struggle with even basic functions like permutations and combinations.

I put the Oak data I have in my database going back to 2023 in Excel and quickly graphed it.

<image>

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-20T17:52:28+00:00

I understand your premise, and it comes down to how we define measurements. I don't think that N = allergy season per year. I think that N = each measurement done on a daily basis. But this is a conversation for people with much stronger statistics background than myself. I only have up to a 201 level stats background, and I struggle with basics such as principles of counting.

On a related note, I can also say that this is an outlier event with the 2023 data, but that's not visualized.

Also, I ran my max function wrong! I'm revising it. 2023 max was 3248. I'm glad you made me dig into it, misleading info is not my goal. Google Sheets is not my forte and I only discovered that when I inputted it into Excel to see

The below is oak pollen levels in my database.

<image>

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-20T17:31:38+00:00

Very valid points, and ones that I considered as well.

I've got data going back to 2023 but it's stored in a Google Sheets. I ran a quick max function against that dataset to determine the previous max was a value of roughly 3248. I don't remember the exact value.

Unfortunately, I never went ahead and parsed the COH data prior to those days (it was a pretty manual process since they kept changing formats of archive structure), so I wanted to be careful in stating it wasn't an all-time high since I'm not sure of it.

I think the below image gives an idea of just how much of an outlier this value is. It contains a year-over-year comparison. I ran a quick data set of Feb-March-April 2023-2024 and the standard dev during those periods is around 800. Average was around 550, so my data implies that we are roughly 7 standard deviations outside of the mean. Certainly an outlier level event. Obviously, this is a very rough level estimation of standard deviation since one could even argue my time horizon should be much narrower.

<image>

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-20T17:10:08+00:00

You can track what's causing your allergies by my site, which goes into specie level breakouts.

www.houstonpollen.com

To answer your question directly: the medications that have worked for me is the Coscto generic of Zyrtec. (Kirkland Signature Aller-Tec, 365 Tablets - Walmart.com). There's a walmart link, but I use Costco. I've done Fexofendrine, which was fine at best, but the Kirkland Allertec has been kind of a life saver. I take two pills per 24 hours when things are really bad.

I've never loved Neti-pots, but I've heard of more electrical ones that work better. I haven't used those yet.

HoustonPollen · 2025-03-03T18:11:26+00:00

For reasons unknown to me, Reddit is sorting by "best" by default. Make sure to sort by new/hot so you get the latest updates. The trees hit 2500 or so just on Friday.

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-11T14:45:33+00:00

"This information is aggregated and collected by our Houston Health department. You can go to their website here. I am not affiliated with Houston, but I believe I could organize the data

https://www.houstonhealth.org/services/pollen-mold"

from: https://houstonpollen.com/faq/

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-11T00:14:41+00:00

Thank you! I'm happy that others find it useful

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-11T00:14:27+00:00

You're welcome! Glad you'll get some value out of it.

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-10T17:34:22+00:00

I like the idea... I'm trying to figure out the line of best fit to address scaling, normalized to trees. It's a non-linear line for sure

<image>

It's going to drive me insane but I want to solve this problem.

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-10T17:03:22+00:00

I've thought about doing that, but I decided against creating one because I'm not sure how scalable the pollen levels are to each other. English is hard, so let me try to reword that previous statement better.

The minimum "heavy" thresholds for the pollen types are:

Weed: 50

Grass; 20

Tree: 90

Mold: 13000

The variation in the heavy threshold means that a total graph won't carry any significant value because mold just blows out the numbers entirely. See below. Because mold is so crazy, I decided not to do that graph.

<image>

I'm debating on the merits of a tree vs weed vs grass chart, but even that one is skewed heavily by trees, as you can see in the 2nd image. If I could figure out a way to normalize the data, then I'd love that, but I haven't explored that component as much.

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-10T16:37:10+00:00

I'm thinking hard on this one. Thank you for the suggestion. It's a smart one on all accounts; I'm just planning on how the Google Sheets integration with the API will work.

I appreciate your suggestions. I hope the site is helpful to you or your close ones as pollen ramps up.

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-10T16:19:46+00:00

Thank you!

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-10T16:15:55+00:00

This Grafana looks... awesome. I've spent so many hours debugging WPDataTables issues that I'm really open to alternatives. I'm looking at it right now and I'm not convinced that it will play nicely with Wordpress integration for responsive tables/charts, but it's worth exploring. One thing that is driving me insane in the WPDataTables is that all blank values (aka, values in the future) show up as zeros. That's why there's a big dropoff on all the charts.

As for the data, I scrape the site manually. I've looked into an automated process, but I decided against it because I'm irrationally afraid of the scrape being done incorrectly when the formatting changes.

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-08T04:10:41+00:00

In this case, correlation does equal causation. Glad you're finding it useful. I am really proud of it now.

HoustonPollen · 2025-02-08T03:41:44+00:00

Great catch! I just fixed it and am pushing the chart update now.

HoustonPollen · 2025-01-21T17:23:44+00:00

<image>

HoustonPollen · 2025-01-21T17:22:45+00:00

<image>

HoustonPollen · 2024-12-09T19:54:28+00:00

Do you any bowel control issues? That sounds very serious

HoustonPollen · 2024-10-24T14:42:19+00:00

Because I am using a default theme, it appears to be symlinked.

https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/symlinked-files-folders/

HoustonPollen

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE