Great Day to Be Outside, If It Weren’t for Allergies

 

A 65-year-old?law professor?who lives on the Upper East Side tentatively follows suit, baring his chest, figuring he knows no one in the area anyway.

Eying them both, Mark Cilla, 55, a budget manager from Commack, N.Y., tapping on a laptop, feels emboldened and spontaneously shrugs out of his button-down.

“This is heaven,” Mr. Cilla says to himself as his belly reddens in the sun.

Steps behind him, in the leaf-tattooed shade, Larry Ferruzzi is in hell. His head swims, his eyes water and his nose itches and runs. “This is really rough, the worst ever,” says Mr. Ferruzzi, 67, who sells industrial lighting, as he presses a white linen handkerchief to his nose. “I can’t stop sneezing,” he says, then sneezes again.

After a punishing winter and a cruel, rainy April, the weather this past week in New York has indeed seemed heaven-sent — or at least from California: crisp, cloudless days with temperatures hovering around 70 degrees. Sun- and warmth-starved New Yorkers surfaced like worms after a rain, arraying themselves on every available bench, chair and patch of grass.

But such idyllic meteorological conditions — dry and not too hot — also provide ideal reproductive conditions for some trees. Specifically, oak, beech and maple, whose tiny flowers have been releasing copious amounts of pollen, which have been carried far and wide by gentle winds, unimpeded by rain and, for the most part, leaves, and into the noses of allergy sufferers.

Allergy sufferers, in turn, find themselves facing an ugly choice: Crack open the windows, for now is that fleeting time when neither air-conditioners nor radiators are needed, enjoy the gorgeous weather, and accept the consequences.

The city’s pollen count is officially “high.” According to Pollen.com, on Thursday it was 9.9 on a scale of zero to 12, having fallen from 11.1 a week earlier. Allergies worsen asthma attacks, and earlier this week, the city’s health department counted more asthma-related emergency room visits than at the same time last year.

Dr. Benjamin Aubey, a pediatrician at Harlem Hospital Center, has seen several children who had been sent home from school because the staff thought they had pinkeye. “But it’s just allergies flying,” Dr. Aubey said.

Drugstores are struggling to keep allergy medicines on their shelves. Jesenia Fuentes, a clerk at a Duane Reade in Midtown, said a shipment that arrived?early Thursday would very likely be gone within hours.

Jimmy Lee, 52, who lives in Hell’s Kitchen and works in the hotel business, said he prepared for heavy demand for his allergy medicine. “I get it by the case,” said Mr. Lee as he sat in the pedestrian strip along Broadway by 41st Street, sniffling. Staying inside, he said, was not an option. “For the first time ever, this winter I had cabin fever,” he said.

And so it went throughout the city, with many New Yorkers, ever conflicted, both loving and hating the weather.

Leslie Castillo, a 37-year-old allergy sufferer, said she would stay indoors but for her two children. “It’s ruined spring a little bit for me,” Ms. Castillo said as she sat in the grass at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with her 2-year-old, taking in the glorious day with itchy, reddened eyes.

At Sheep Meadow in Central Park, Aziza Azim, 20, a fashion student at Parsons, stretched out on a blanket with two friends a few hours after one of them woke up and declared, “We need to tan.” Ms. Azim, who is allergic to pollen and horses, had girded for the excursion with Claritin. “If I take my medicine, I know it’s fine,” she said, and then proceeded to sneeze three times.

Compounding the woes of allergy sufferers is a high-pressure system wedged between two low-pressure systems, creating dry, stagnant air in New York City. But Ross Dickman, a meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service for the city, forecast that all would change this weekend. “It’s going to be cloudy, wet, almost miserable for May,” Mr. Dickman said. “That will help bring some of the allergens out of the air, kind of sterilize the atmosphere a little bit.”

Meanwhile, the trees’ pollination will abate, easing allergy conditions, at least until late May, when grass allergies break out, said Robert F. C. Naczi, curator of North American botany at The New York Botanical Garden. “So there’s at least two weeks of a reprieve.”

Anemona Hartocollis and Juliet Linderman contributed reporting.