Pollen and allergies — Campobasso
Campobasso sits on the crest of a hilltop spur at roughly 700 metres, standing out over the Biferno basin with the Molise Apennines behind it and the Matese to the south-west. The capital watches Molise from above: below the city the farmland of the Biferno hollow opens up, pastures and coppice woods hold onto the slopes, and the lower hills carry the olive groves typical of the region. The hill's exposure makes the town windy, but the Apennine nights stay cold until well into spring.
Periods and allergens to watch
- April and May: grasses in the pastures and farmland of the Biferno basin, starting more slowly than on the Adriatic coast.
- May and June: olive in the hillside groves of the lower sectors, followed at altitude by the later flowers.
- Summer: mid-altitude grasses keep their peak until July, thanks to the cool mountain nights.
- Late summer: mugwort along the roadsides and on waste ground; ragweed appears in the modeled data, but has historically stayed scarce in central and southern Italy.
Campobasso uses CAMS through Open-Meteo. Concentrations are modeled, not measured locally by this service, at approximately 11 km resolution. The forecast displays alder, birch, grasses, mugwort, olive and ragweed; the Molisan landscape also hosts species that are not included, such as cypress and parietaria.
The spur juts out into the wind and often disperses pollen faster than the valley floor, where night inversions let it stagnate along the Biferno; in the morning the difference between the hill and the valley is marked, then convection evens the picture out. Climbing toward the pastures or descending into the valley changes the reading: flowering shifts to altitude with weeks of delay. Treat the model as a guide for the area and observe real conditions before spending a long time outdoors.