Histamine Histories – 2026 AAIR Pollen Count Reports For Central And Western New York (But Based In Rochester)

Above: A pollen-covered bee (better it than me). Taken with an unknown camera 3 March 2017 and released under Creative Commons CC0. PxHere.

Charts Updated – 6 May 2026

Introduction

See Histamine Histories 2025 for more background.

The charts below are made possible by the highly relevant and important (certainly to me, now four years into my fourth round of serums at one of the AAIR offices) work done by Dr. Albert Hartel (5 stars), Allergy Asthma Immunology of Rochester (AAIR, www.aair.info).

From the Facebook Page: AAIR is the only pollen counting station, providing the only pollen counts for Rochester, the Finger Lakes, Syracuse and west to Olean! We appreciate you supporting AAIR so that we can continue to provide this service free of charge for allergy and asthma sufferers, health care providers, newspapers, television weather departments, other media and for national research!

Changes From The 2025 Page

  • Mold is now listed as an item with an associated plot.
  • For those reading directly from the AAIR .xls files, I'm reporting "Present" as "Low" in the Total Pollen Report plot for mold for consistency with the 2025 tree, grass, and weed data.

Notes

  • If a date is missing, AAIR did not report any measurements for that day (esp. weekends).
  • Figures are made with Easy Charts because it's free, not hobbled by "pro" versions, and does exactly what I need it to do. My thanks to Kiran Potphode for making a great little WordPress plugin. I'm still playing with the formatting.
  • Bold text at top-right are clickable to download each image.
  • You can click on the items in the Legends to make the lines disappear or reappear (if some of the numbers cluster too tightly and you can't tell which is which based on the color schemes)
  • Charts are broken down into Total Pollen, Trees (then High Count Trees and Low Count Trees for ease of reading), Grasses, and Weeds and report on that which is in the AAIR air (sorry, I had to).
  • Mold will get its own plot if/when sufficient data arrives.
  • Samples are taken with a Rotorod. See https://www.pollen.com/help/rotorod or https://www.biologydiscussion.com/palynology/samplers-conventionally-used-for-trapping-pollen-grains/64703 for light details.

2026 Total Pollen Report

Reported from AAIR:

For Trees: A ("0", absent), L ("1", low, > 0-14 grains/m3), M ("2", moderate, > 15-89 grains/m3), H ("3", high, > 90-1,499 grains/m3), and VH ("4", very high, > 1,500 grains/m3, just plant yourself in front of the air filter).

For Grasses: A ("0", absent), L ("1", low, > 0-14 grains/m3), M ("2", moderate, > 15-19 grains/m3), H ("3", high, > 20-199 grains/m3), and VH ("4", very high, > 200 grains/m3).

For Weeds: A ("0", absent), L ("1", low, > 0-9 grains/m3), M ("2", moderate, > 10-49 grains/m3), H ("3", high, > 50-499 grains/m3), and VH ("4", very high, > 500 grains/m3).

For Mold: Currently, mold is either absent or present in low quantities. A value of "1" simply means it's around, but that is not to be taken as a direct indicator of spore concentration until something other than "Present" is reported by AAIR.

And go directly to the 2025 plot.

2026 Tree Pollen Counts

Everything reported, including the daily total.

2026 Tree Pollen Counts – High Tree Counts

Includes anything reaching 50 grains/m3 in the 2025 reporting session – it not above 50 yet, give it some time.

2026 Tree Pollen Counts – Low Tree Counts

"Little things mean a lot." – Edith Lindeman

Includes anything NOT reaching 50 grains/m3 in the 2025 reporting session – if anything is above 50 in the plot, it is out-performing itself vs. last year's values.

2026 Grass Pollen Counts

Grass pollen was detected starting on May 12th of 2025, but the kind of pollen was not reported. grassA/B/C are kept as placeholders in the event.

2026 Weed Pollen Counts

This chart is a place-holder for when the first round of weed pollen is detected.