As the first shoots of spring begin to emerge in North Carolina, a glance to the skies will reveal quite the incredible sight to the eyes.
A thick haze of pollen has descended over the southeastern United States, blanketing the sky and promising a sharp increases in the number of allergy cases reported.
All over North Carolina, glorious photos of the natural phenomena made the rounds all over social media. These photos from professional photographer Jeremy Gilchrist tell us the story, as he took several photos from high up in Durham, North Carolina.
"No tricks here. Yes you are looking at a green haze made up of tree pollen from the pines of central NC!" he added.
Gilchrist wasn't the only one to capture these striking images, either; all over Twitter, people were posting their own photos of the springtime phenomenon, while fellow North Carolina resident Andrea Blanford admitted: "I just sneezed looking back at these pictures I snapped," showing pollen-covered parts of the town as the yellow haze descends.
Turning the sky a mesmerising yellow, doctors in the area are expecting to have their work cut out with allergy patients over the next couple of weeks. Heather Gutekunst, doctor with the Allergy Partners of Raleigh, had more on the issue, speaking to ABC 11.
“In April in North Carolina we have an overlap for a couple weeks where we have pretty high counts of tree and then grass also gets started. So when we see that, if you are allergic to both, we tend to see an escalation in symptoms."
"The pine can bother some patients, but it's a small percentage of patients compared to some of the things that we can't see," added Gutekunst. "The smaller the pollen that's invisible to the naked eye tends to be more of a trigger for the immune response than the larger pollen that we can see."
Out in Raleigh, North Carolina, the current pollen count is around 1778.8 grains per cubic metre of air, which is the highest count on record so far this year, according to North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality.