A fast, honest answer to a seasonal question.
IsItAllergySeasonYet.com exists to give 81 million American allergy sufferers the quickest possible answer to the question they ask every spring: is it going to be bad today?
What this site is
It's a single-page pollen reference with the answer at the top in black-and-white — yes or no — followed by the five-day forecast, a breakdown of what's actually in the air (tree, grass, weed), a regional map, practical advice for the season, and straightforward background reading.
There are no interstitial quizzes, no "accept our newsletter" modals, no autoplay video. We write like adults talking to other adults who have runny noses and want to know whether to run errands today.
Why we built it
Every site in the allergy-information space falls into one of two camps: pharma-sponsored marketing with cartoon mascots, or legacy utility sites with 2013 design and 20 banner ads per page. Neither respects the reader's time.
Meanwhile, the underlying question — "is it allergy season for me right now" — is answerable in about 800 milliseconds with a single API call. We built the site we wished existed.
Where the data comes from
Pollen counts and five-day forecasts are provided by the Google Pollen API, which aggregates pollen-measurement data from meteorological and environmental sources worldwide. Index values are scored on the Universal Pollen Index (UPI) scale of 0–5.
We cache forecasts on a ~10 km geographic grid for up to 25 hours, so many users in the same region share a single data fetch. This keeps the service fast and the bills sane, without degrading accuracy (pollen doesn't meaningfully change on a block-by-block basis).
Location is resolved via your browser's geolocation API and reverse-geocoded through OpenStreetMap Nominatim. Map tiles are from CARTO and OpenStreetMap.
Who runs it
The site is operated by an independent developer who has had seasonal allergies their entire life and thinks a lot of the public-facing medical internet is worse than it needs to be. Editorial decisions — what to include, what to leave out, how plainly to write — are made here, not by committee.
We are not physicians, and nothing on this site is medical advice. For anything beyond the basics, talk to your doctor or a board-certified allergist. See our Terms for the full disclaimer.
Our principles
- The answer comes first. You shouldn't have to scroll to find out whether pollen is high in your area today.
- Data, not anecdote. Every severity number on this site comes from a measured API response, not a vibe.
- No dark patterns. No forced email captures, no scroll-jacking, no ads that look like content.
- Respect for location. Coordinates are rounded to a ~10 km grid before any API call and are never stored.
- Plain writing. If a sentence reads like a press release, we cut it.
A note on advertising
The site is supported by display ads (Google AdSense) and a small number of affiliate links for products we would recommend anyway — HEPA filters, OTC antihistamines, and similar. We disclose affiliate relationships in the page footer and never recommend a product we wouldn't use ourselves. Ad revenue keeps the site free for everyone.
Get in touch
Questions, feedback, data corrections, or partnership inquiries go to hello@isitallergyseasonyet.com, or use the contact form.