Spring blossoms, dusty streets, distant fires and a lack of rain combine to create hazardous respiratory conditions.

Salal bushes observed to be very dry and dying in British Columbia.

Pollen from birch trees was carried along with dust from the Sahara Desert on strong winds that originated in Eastern Europe.

the Beaufort Picnic Area appears to consist of stream-origin alluvial cobbles, pebbles, and perhaps sand, and so not well consolidated, thus perhaps making these trees relatively vulnerable to wind. The snapped-off trees, however, indicate the unusually high intensity of this particular windstorm.

A sharp decline in chestnut trees caused by a parasitic fungus in Russia's southern Krasnodar region is threatening the area's honey production, according to local beekeepers and scientists.

The closures of the campgrounds, facing the threat of falling trees, likely will last through summer, the state parks division said.

Warm temperatures are rapidly melting snow and creating ice, which creates difficult conditions for dog mushers. Migratory birds are arriving early, and a mosquito emerged months early. Small owls dead around the Goldstream Valley that looked unusually thin.

Alder catkins (the pollen-rich flowers on alder trees) haven't reached their peak yet, but there are a lot of them. There can be four to five million pollen particles in a single catkin.

Warmer than normal temperatures in Anchorage may be causing willows (genus Salix) to bud early.

Willows budding about a month early 30 miles above the Arctic Circle.

Questions have been raised after the 10th widest Douglas fir tree in BC BigTree Registry is cut down.

As many allergy-sufferers across Finland may have already suspected, birch pollen levels were very high on Wednesday, according to the University of Turku.

City a ‘smoky hell’ as hill on opposite side of Amur River is in flames while driver films inferno on train track.

We have over two weeks of cold windy weather. It started in mid April around the time of the big wind storm. And in relation of the wind storm on April 24th, Rick Thoman wrote: "Winds this strong in the Anchorage are rare at this time of year. An unusually strong storm for the season in the southeastern Bering Sea produced southeast strong winds blowing across the Chugach Mountains. However, being April, the temperature profile of the atmosphere close to the ground was more conducive than in winter for allowing the very strong winds aloft to reach down to the ground.

Sargassum is free-floating brown macro-algae that lives in the temperate and tropical oceans of the world. In the open ocean, the floating seaweed provides important ecosystem services by acting as habitats for a diverse group of marine animals. It provides food, shade, and shelter to many types of specialized fish, crustaceans, and turtles.

In the midst of B.C.'s record-breaking wildfire season, the heat from four fires triggered huge thunderstorms that sent smoke flying into the stratosphere, eventually spreading through the entire Northern Hemisphere.

There is a spruce beetle outbreak in Southcentral Alaska. Since the beetles don't emerge for a few weeks, we might as well start thinking about the problem.