CENTRAL TEXAS (FOX 44) — Known to populate here in Central Texas, Cedar Fever is a pollen from the mountain Cedar Tree.

It typically stirs up allergies caused by cedar pollen, impacting parts of the sinuses. Experts start to see the spread prevalent in late November with peak dates in January.

Dr. Dustin Fowler with Allergy and Asthma Care of Waco shared with FOX 44 just how severe Cedar Fever is this time of year.

“It is a huge thing that allergists have to deal with this time of year. So mountain cedar is, I call it the big bad of Central Texas when it comes to pollen’s. It is a notorious pollen,” shares Dr. Fowler.

Symptoms include sneezing, runny nose, itchy and watery eyes, post nasal drip, and coughing, which can cause swollen or inflamed airways for those with asthma.

Medicines to combat Cedar Fever vary from taking over the counter prescriptions like Claritin, Allegra, and nasal sprays. People experiencing more severe cases, might visit an allergist to avoid reoccurring suffering and sinus infections.

For those wondering how to distinguish symptoms for allergies versus the common cold and flu, Dr. Fowler has some insight.

“Symptoms between allergies and the common cold can overlap very significantly. Even though we call it cedar fever is really you should not anticipate really high grade fevers on a on a recurrent basis.”

Another key component to the spread of cedar pollen is the role that weather plays. The presence of wind is what causes pollen particles to get in our airways.

But what does the rain do? FOX 44’s Meteorologist Haley Fitzpatrick weighs in.

“On a dry day when it’s windy, the cedar pollen’s flying throughout the air. But if you get rain like we did today, it helps to settle a lot of that pollen. But you don’t want to get too much rain because sometimes that will lead to an overload of maybe grass or weed pollen. And we’ll start to bunch up with the surface and the winds pick out the metal, start blowing everywhere too.”