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Real-time pollen data for Dunwoody — updated daily.
Oak is Dunwoody's dominant tree allergen and the reason the city's spring tree index runs high. White oak, red oak, water oak, willow oak, and post oak occur across mature residential canopy throughout the city's thirteen square miles. Oak grains are microscopic and remain airborne for hours, penetrating deep into the airways. Because Dunwoody's canopy is uniformly dense rather than patchy, oak exposure is consistent citywide with little low-pollen refuge.
Hickory is a defining component of Piedmont oak-hickory forest and significantly allergenic. It is abundant across Dunwoody's established neighborhoods and creek corridors, extending the tree season slightly past oak's peak.
The first significant tree pollen of the year, releasing weeks before oak and coinciding with Georgia's Arbor Day in mid-February. Routinely overlooked because they arrive before most people expect pollen season to begin. February symptoms in Dunwoody almost always trace here.
Loblolly and shortleaf pine produce the visible spring yellow film. Sweetgum is abundant and significantly allergenic, particularly along creek corridors. Pine grains are large and less efficient at reaching deep airways than oak or hickory, but volume makes pine a meaningful irritant.
Nancy Creek and the smaller drainages threading the city support river birch, sycamore, box elder, and green ash. River birch begins early in the season and is highly allergenic. These corridors add a distinct bottomland pollen component to the upland canopy load.
Bermuda grass dominates lawns, parks, athletic fields, and office campus landscaping around Perimeter Center. Fescue and ryegrass are common on shaded residential lots. Johnson grass grows along roadway margins and utility easements. Dense canopy means proportionally less open turf than lower-density communities.
Ragweed is the dominant fall allergen, with creek margins, utility easements, and roadway shoulders providing disturbed-ground habitat. Pigweed, lamb's quarters, nettle, and plantain contribute. Goldenrod blooms conspicuously alongside but is insect-pollinated and produces little airborne pollen.
Nancy Creek and its feeder drainages keep low ground damp well after uplands dry, sustaining fungal spore production. Cladosporium and Alternaria peak in late summer and early fall. Aspergillus and Penicillium are common indoors. Piedmont red clay drains slowly, holding water against foundations after heavy thunderstorms. Dense canopy leaf litter decomposes continuously.
Perimeter Center generates substantial commuter volume, with I-285 and Ashford Dunwoody Road carrying heavy traffic. Diesel and fine particulate inflame airway linings and amplify biological allergen responses, concentrated near the commercial core and major arterials during peak periods.
Dust mites thrive in the humid subtropical climate. Pet dander is significant. Indoor mold risk is elevated in creekside homes and in houses with basements or crawl spaces exposed to sustained bottomland moisture.
Severity: Low. Trees, grasses, and weeds are dormant across the city. Indoor allergens dominate, with dust mites and pet dander peaking under closed-window heating. Creekside homes continue to see elevated indoor mold from bottomland moisture. Cedar and juniper may begin by mid-January. Because Dunwoody's season opens in February, this is the month to establish preventive treatment.
Severity: Moderate. Elm, maple, and cedar release the year's first significant tree pollen, weeks before oak. River birch begins along Nancy Creek. Georgia's Arbor Day falls on the third Friday of the month, placing tree planting and yard work squarely inside early pollen release. Residents who assume the season has not started are frequently already reacting.
Severity: Severe. Oak, hickory, sweetgum, and pine peak together across Dunwoody's uniformly dense canopy. The visible yellow pine film coats surfaces. Because the canopy is consistent citywide rather than patchy, there is little low-pollen refuge within the city. Local conditions frequently run above regional counts. Dry, windy afternoons spike sharply.
Severity: High. Oak declines while hickory continues, extending the tree season slightly. Bermuda grass begins surging on lawns, parks, and Perimeter Center office landscaping. Spring thunderstorms arrive, with red clay holding water against foundations and creek bottoms staying damp.
Severity: High. Bermuda grass dominates. Summer heat and humidity build. Nancy Creek corridor and feeder drainages hold moisture, pushing mold upward. Dust mites rise indoors as air conditioning runs continuously. Ragweed opens in August along creek margins and easements.
Severity: High. Ragweed peaks in September along corridor margins, easements, and roadway shoulders. Alternaria and Cladosporium reach annual highs in the creek bottoms. Leaf fall from dense citywide canopy is substantial, generating sustained Cladosporium and Aspergillus as litter decomposes. Counts drop through November toward the winter lull.
Since you are probably looking at a number on this page, it is worth knowing what it represents. A pollen count is the concentration of pollen grains in a cubic meter of air, collected at a monitoring station over a set period and identified under a microscope. Two things follow from that. First, it is regional — a single station often stands in for an entire metropolitan area, so the figure describes the metro's air rather than your street's. Second, it is retrospective: counts generally reflect a collection period that has already closed, meaning the number describes air that has already passed through. None of this makes counts useless. They are the best available signal of regional conditions and they track seasonal patterns reliably. But they are a weather report for a region, not a measurement of what you are breathing on your porch.
Local canopy matters enormously. Dunwoody covers roughly thirteen square miles that are densely and fairly uniformly wooded in oak and hickory, with tree protection regulations and an active planting program that has added more than two thousand trees since 2013 through a partnership with Trees Atlanta. Compare that with Atlanta proper, where canopy swings from very sparse in the paved downtown core to heavily wooded in outer residential neighborhoods. A regional monitoring figure averages across all of that. In a city that is essentially wooded end to end, the local reality during peak oak season can sit meaningfully above the reported regional number — which is one reason Dunwoody residents often feel worse than the forecast suggests they should.
This is the distinction that matters most clinically. A pollen count aggregates everything airborne — oak, pine, hickory, sweetgum, grass, weeds — into a total or a category index. Your immune system does not aggregate. It reacts to the specific proteins it has become sensitized to and ignores the rest. So a day rated moderate but dominated by oak can be far worse for an oak-sensitive person than a day rated high but driven mostly by pine. This is why so many people conclude the counts are unreliable, when in fact the counts are fine and the missing information is which species they personally react to. Blood testing supplies that missing half. With both, the daily number becomes genuinely predictive for you rather than roughly descriptive for everyone.
Dunwoody contains a large share of Perimeter Center, among the largest office concentrations in the Southeast, which means many residents move each day between a heavily canopied residential neighborhood and a paved commercial district a few miles away. Those two environments have substantially different pollen loads at the same hour. Add a sealed car and a sealed office and your actual daily exposure looks nothing like a single flat number. If you are trying to work out what triggers you, note where you were as well as when — morning in the yard, midday in an office tower, and evening on a wooded street are three different exposures on the same calendar day.
Georgia observes Arbor Day on the third Friday in February, and Dunwoody plants enthusiastically — including a Front Yard Tree Planting Program offering free shade trees to residents. February is also precisely when elm, maple, and cedar release the year's first significant tree pollen, weeks ahead of oak. If you volunteer at a planting or spend the day working in the yard, you are outdoors during early tree pollen release at a time most people do not think of as allergy season. Preventive antihistamines and nasal sprays need several days to reach full effect, so being established before that weekend rather than after it makes a real difference.
Nancy Creek, named for a Cherokee woman who lived in the area, threads through Dunwoody toward the Chattahoochee. Its corridor and the smaller drainages feeding it support river birch, sycamore, box elder, and sweetgum, and the low ground stays damp well after the surrounding uplands dry. Combined with Piedmont red clay that drains slowly after heavy thunderstorms, this sustains fungal spore production in creekside neighborhoods above what higher lots experience. Run dehumidifiers through the warm months, keep downspouts extended well clear of foundations, and check basements and crawl spaces after extended wet stretches.
It measures pollen grains per cubic meter of air, collected at a monitoring station and identified under a microscope. Two limitations follow. Counts are regional — one station often represents an entire metro area rather than your street. And they are retrospective, reflecting a collection period that has already closed. They track seasonal patterns reliably and are the best signal of regional conditions available, but they are closer to a regional weather report than a measurement of what you are breathing at home.
Two reasons, and both apply in Dunwoody. First, local canopy matters: a city that is densely and uniformly wooded across thirteen square miles can run above a regional average that includes paved and sparsely treed areas. Second and more important, counts measure total pollen while your immune system reacts only to the species it is sensitized to. A moderate day dominated by oak hits an oak-sensitive person harder than a high day driven by pine.
Pair them with knowing what you actually react to. Blood testing identifies your specific sensitizations, which turns a general regional index into something predictive — you can watch the species that matter to you rather than a total that blends everything together. Without that, counts describe conditions for everyone in the metro and no one in particular.
February opens the season with elm, maple, and cedar. Late March through April is the severe stretch, when oak, hickory, sweetgum, and pine peak together across the city's dense canopy. Hickory extends slightly into May. Grass runs May into September. Ragweed peaks August through October. Mold stays elevated spring through fall in the creek bottoms.
During spring, yes — and its uniformity matters as much as its density. Because the city is consistently wooded across its full thirteen square miles rather than patchy, there is little low-pollen area within Dunwoody to retreat to during peak oak season. That same canopy provides shade, cooling, and air filtration the rest of the year, so it is a genuine trade rather than a straightforward negative.
Yes. HeyAllergy provides telemedicine appointments with board-certified allergists licensed in Georgia. No waitlist — useful for Perimeter Center professionals whose schedules do not accommodate midday clinic visits. Available throughout north DeKalb including Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Doraville, and surrounding communities.
HeyPak® sublingual immunotherapy drops are customized based on allergy blood test results. For Dunwoody residents, this targets local oak, hickory, elm, maple, river birch, sweetgum, pine, Bermuda grass, ragweed, mold, and dust mite allergens specific to the Piedmont. Daily drops placed under the tongue retrain your immune system rather than just suppressing symptoms, with improvement typically seen in 3–6 months. Treatment is recommended for 3–5 years for lasting relief. Starting at $47/month.
HeyAllergy accepts Medicare and most major PPO health plans, including United Healthcare, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, Oscar, and Tricare. Contact your insurance provider with Tax ID: 85-0834175 to confirm telemedicine coverage.
Dunwoody is a city of approximately 52,000 in northern DeKalb County, covering about thirteen square miles at an elevation near 1,129 feet with a population density close to 4,000 per square mile. The area was settled in the early 1830s and takes its name from Major Charles Dunwody — the extra letter arriving via a misspelling on a banking note. Creek and Cherokee people inhabited the area long before, drawn by proximity to the Chattahoochee. Dunwoody incorporated on December 1, 2008, the first city formed in DeKalb County since Pine Lake in 1937, and the beginning of the modern wave of municipal formations that reshaped the county. It is densely and consistently canopied in oak and hickory, which produces one of the higher spring tree pollen environments in the metro.
What distinguishes Dunwoody's canopy is its uniformity rather than simply its density. Atlanta's tree cover swings dramatically — sparse across the paved downtown core, heavy in outer residential neighborhoods. Dunwoody is wooded fairly consistently across its thirteen square miles, with mature oak-hickory canopy through established residential areas, tree protection regulations, and an active planting program that has added more than two thousand trees since 2013 in partnership with Trees Atlanta, alongside a Front Yard Tree Planting Program offering free shade trees to residents. The city participates in the Arbor Day Foundation's network. The practical consequence for allergy patients is that there is little low-pollen refuge within the city during peak tree season, and local conditions can sit above regional averages.
A pollen count measures grains per cubic meter of air, collected at a monitoring station and identified microscopically. Counts are regional, typically representing an entire metro from a single site, and they are retrospective, reflecting a collection period that has already closed. They track seasonal patterns reliably and are the best available signal of regional conditions. What they cannot do is describe an individual street or an individual immune system. A densely canopied city can run above the regional figure during peak oak season, and more importantly, counts aggregate all airborne pollen into a total while a sensitized immune system responds only to specific species. A moderate day dominated by oak affects an oak-sensitive person more than a high day driven by pine. Allergy blood testing supplies the missing variable, turning a general regional index into something genuinely predictive for a particular patient.
Dunwoody contains much of Perimeter Center, among the largest concentrations of office space in the Southeast, anchored by Perimeter Mall and served by MARTA. A large share of residents therefore move daily between heavily wooded residential neighborhoods and paved commercial districts only a few miles away — two environments with substantially different pollen loads at the same hour, connected by a sealed vehicle. Actual personal exposure over a single day varies far more than any daily figure can convey, which is worth remembering when trying to identify what triggered a particular flare.
Nancy Creek, named for a Cherokee woman who lived in the area, runs through Dunwoody toward the Chattahoochee, joined by smaller drainages threading the city. These corridors support river birch, sycamore, box elder, green ash, and sweetgum, producing spring pollen and holding moisture well after the uplands dry. Piedmont red clay underlies the higher ground, draining slowly and retaining water against foundations after the region's frequent heavy thunderstorms. Brook Run Park and the Dunwoody Nature Center preserve additional wooded acreage within the city.
Georgia observes Arbor Day on the third Friday in February — chosen for ideal winter planting conditions, and coinciding almost exactly with the release of elm, maple, and cedar pollen, the genuine openers of the local season weeks ahead of oak. Dunwoody's tree-planting culture therefore places residents outdoors and working with soil and saplings during early pollen release, at a point in the calendar most people do not associate with allergy season at all.
Dunwoody's uniformly dense oak-hickory canopy leaving little low-pollen refuge and pushing local conditions above regional averages, daily movement between wooded neighborhoods and paved office districts producing exposure swings no single count can capture, creek corridor bottomlands sustaining mold above upland levels, and a February tree-planting tradition falling squarely inside early pollen release create an allergy environment where regional pollen numbers alone explain very little. HeyAllergy connects Dunwoody residents with board-certified allergists through telemedicine. Patients receive allergy blood testing that identifies which specific allergens they react to, personalized treatment, and HeyPak® sublingual immunotherapy drops custom-formulated for Piedmont allergens. Treatment starts at $47/month. No needles, no clinic visits, no waitlist.
