Spring is here, and this favourite season often brings thunderstorms and pollen in the air. During grass pollen season, from October through to December, people may notice an increase in asthma and hay fever. These months also bring the chance of thunderstorm asthma.

Dr Michael Geluk, Emergency Department (ED) Consultant and Chair of the ED Disaster Planning committee explains how we are preparing for the thunderstorm asthma season.

"We are putting plans in place that will help us deal with potential large numbers of thunderstorm asthma patients arriving in a short period of time. Previous experience tells us most of them will be mildly unwell, but still need treatment, while some will need hospital admission" he explains.

Dr Geluk leads planning around transforming the health service from the routine and day to day operations to disaster planning and Code Brown activity.

"In a Code Brown mode, people with non life-threatening conditions and non-urgent problems might not be able to get care, so the team can focus on the patients that come with thunderstorm asthma symptoms and need urgent care," he adds.

"One of the main learnings we had in 2016 was that the community realised thunderstorm asthma exists, and people need to be prepared. If you had any previous problems with asthma, you need to be able to anticipate high risk days, and luckily now we get warnings when it's a high-risk day," he explains.

If you know you are asthmatic, avoid being outside during thunderstorms from October through December, especially in the wind gusts that come before the storm and make sure your medications are up to date and not expired.

"Previous events showed that many people had asthma, or had poorly controlled asthma, but didn't know it. It took thunderstorm asthma to unmask it. Even if you know you have hay fever, it's always a good idea to make sure medications are ready and make sure you check on the elderly," he adds.

"My advice to the community would be that when the thunderstorm asthma day comes, that day wouldn't be the day to come to the Emergency Department with a minor problem that has been bothering you for a while," he concludes.

Related services

• Emergency care

  Austin Health Emergency is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• Breathing & sleep disorders

  We provide a comprehensive service for people with breathing and sleep disorders, including laboratory testing, care, treatment and research.