Central Minnesota Fall Allergy Relief: Recent Hard Freeze Offers Hope For Allergy Sufferers
If you suffer from allergies in Central Minnesota, you may soon be getting some relief.
Because if you're like a lot of people in our area, you may have been battling allergy symptoms. Scratchy eyes, congestion -- you know, those symptoms that send us to the medicine cabinet or the drug store.
As we do end-of-season yardwork and raking and bagging, we kick-up mold and pollen spores, irritating the respiratory systems of those allergic to all that junk in the air.
But relief may be on the way -- St. Cloud just had its first "hard freeze" of the season.
A lead meteorologist with the Twin Cities National Weather Service, Nick Carletta, says St. Cloud had its first two nights of a hard freeze.
Carletta says a hard freeze happens when the temperatures dip below 28 degrees -- well-below the freezing point of 32.
St. Cloud, he says, had a low of 26 on October 15th and hit 22 degrees on October 16th, well below the 28 degree hard freeze threshold.
Why is that important -- and what does that have to do with allergies?
Temperatures below 28 for more than an hour constitute a hard freeze, killing off any seasonal vegetation. More importantly, those cold temperatures will kill the pollen and mold spores.
That's good news for allergy sufferers who still have the bulk of the raking season to contend with.
The bad news?
We'll soon spend a lot more time INDOORS and will have indoor allergens to contend with.
But we'll deal with when we get there. For now, our allergies may settle down.
Flonase, anyone?