This is the time of year where Atlanta pays the price for having so many beautiful trees.  Pollen counts are so high at this time of year that is coats the entire area with a yellow film.  For those up north who haven’t witnessed this, consider a layer of yellow dust slightly more than a light dusting of flurries and that's the amount that accumulates each day.  Cars are caked in this filth and it’s not worth even washing your car in the 3 weeks or so of this particle bombardment.  Coming out of a car wash simply is an attraction for floating pollen molecules to attach themselves even easier to your vehicle.

Making it worse is that we haven’t had rain in over a week and there isn’t even a chance of rain this week either.  At least with rain at this time of year, it dampens the effect of all this particulate in the air.  This is the perfect time of year to want to open your windows to get some fresh air and you can’t unless you want a layer of yellow in your house too.

Consider that a high level of pollen count is from 60-120.  In the spring here it can exceed 3,000.  Since we haven’t had rain as of late, the counts are now in the stratosphere.  It’s 5,500 as of today.  This translates to “Don’t breath.  Not through your nose.  Not through your mouth.  Not even through your eyes.”  (The website I referenced above is a bit odd since they don't tally weekend counts)

A perfect example of how thick it is was yesterday I was bouncing a tennis ball on our blacktopped driveway.  With each bounce, there was a poof of dust and a black mark where the pollen was and what the blacktop should look like.  You could see the tire tracks of the paper delivery person’s car where he pulled in and out of the driveway too.

With no rain in sight, our skyline is going to look like the apocalypse by week’s end.