How Winter’s Tule Fog Can Affect Sinus Symptoms in the Central Valley

How Winter’s Tule Fog Can Affect Sinus Symptoms in the Central Valley

Life in California’s Central Valley is an amazing experience. With a thriving agricultural industry, the abundance of nuts, fruit, and fresh produce is hard to ignore. Trails in nearby mountain ranges offer opportunities to exercise outdoors. The rainy winter season is the only downside, but it lasts only a few months, and snowfall is rare.

The one thing winter brings is tule fog. Humid, foggy conditions have the pesky habit of affecting people with allergies. If you are prone to seasonal allergies, it’s important to know how tule fog may affect you.

What Is the Tule Fog?

Radiation fog is a ground-level fog that forms on calm, clear nights when the warmer ground cools, lowering the temperature of the air above it. This radiational cooling shifts the dew point, leading to high relative humidity. That humidity stays near the ground, forming a dense fog that persists until the sun is out and burns it off. Think of it as a ground-based cloud.

Fresno sees cooler, wetter air in the winter. The low altitude and valley setting make it harder for the wind to disperse the fog. It often becomes trapped for days. It also picks up pollution from the industries around the Central Valley. It may have higher concentrations of ammonia, car exhaust, fertilizers, nitrate, soil particles, sulfate, and wood smoke.

Why Your Sinus Symptoms Flare Up

When you breathe in air during a tule fog, you’re breathing in those microscopic particles. They’re attached to water droplets, which enables them to get deep into your sinuses. If you suffer from allergies, the inflammation doesn’t go away easily.

Typically, your nose warms, moisturizes, and filters the air you breathe. Tule fog impacts its ability to do this and causes several bothersome issues. 

The Brain Fog Problem: People don’t always connect it with allergies or sinus issues, but it can happen. Chronic inflammation from allergies or irritants keeps the immune system active day and night. When it works nonstop, it can disrupt your sleep, leave you feeling fatigued, and reduce your oxygen intake. You’re tired, struggling to stay focused, and don’t have the energy to complete the tasks you need to.

Mold Grows in Humidity: Moisture is essential to mold growth. Humidity in a tule fog creates the ideal habitat for mold spores. If you have a mold allergy, each breath you take deposits mold spores in your respiratory system. Your immune system mounts a defense. Your sinus tissue swells, causing a migraine-like sinus headache that makes it hard to concentrate.

Mucus Production Increases: As you breathe in, your blood vessels dilate, which increases blood flow to the area and warms it. Your mucus production increases to protect your airway tissue by keeping it moisturized. Because you’re breathing already humid air, the mucus is overkill, leading to excessive mucus in your sinuses.

Pollution Increase: Tule fog is known to be acidic from the pollutants in the air. Nitrogen and sulfur oxides increase the pH and irritate your cilia, the tiny hairs that help the mucus move. When cilia are irritated, mucus flow slows down. As it remains in the same place, bacteria grow, leading to sinusitis.

The Problems With Your Sinuses

Those are the ways tule fog impacts your sinuses and respiratory system, but there’s a reason it’s such a problem. The design of your sinus cavities plays a role in sinus health. It’s about four inches from your nose to the back of your nasal cavity. You have a series of sinuses.

• Frontal Sinuses – Located over each eyebrow towards the top of the nose. These are larger sinuses.
• Ethmoidal Sinuses – These four tiny sinuses are over the bridge of the nose, next to the eyebrows. 
• Superior Turbinates – These sinus cavities are shaped a little like a claw and sit on each side of the eyes at the top of the bridge of your nose.
• Lacrimal Sac – These sacs store and deliver mucin (tear film) to the tear ducts in the corner of your eyes.
• Naso-Lacrimal Ducts – These narrow tubes travel from the nasal passage to the lacrimal sac to help with the flow of saline and mucus that form tears.
• Middle Turbinates – The sections of the sinuses that lead to the superior turbinate between the nose and the lacrimal sac.
• Inferior Turbinates – These small cavities lead from your nasal passage within your nostrils to the middle turbinates.
• Nasal Passages – These are the airways you see when you look in your nostrils.
• Maxillary Sinuses – These large sinus cavities are behind the cheekbones.

When the tissue releases mucus, it’s meant to be thin and keep everything lubricated. If you’ve ever experienced dry eyes, it’s the lack of mucin production that makes your eyes feel so dry and scratchy. Without mucus, tissue dries up. That invites germs in.

Your immune system knows it has to release mucus, but too much, too fast, can block passageways. You feel pressure behind the eyes or in the forehead. You develop ear or sinus infections, and constantly feel the need to blow your nose to clear excess mucus.

Tips for Navigating Fresno’s Winter Season

Living in the Central Valley during the tule fog season requires a proactive approach for healthy sinuses. You may not be able to change the weather, but you can minimize the effects on your health by changing your environment and habits.

Protect your health by keeping pollutants away. This checklist is a good place to start when it comes to limiting sinus issues caused by Tule fog.

• Avoid early morning or dusk activities when the Tule fog is heaviest.
• Change air filters each month.
• Drink extra water to thin your mucus.
• Dust surfaces weekly with a damp cloth.
• Keep your home’s humidity between 30% and 50%.
• Mop wood and other hard floor surfaces.
• Run a HEPA air purifier.
• Seal any drafty areas around doors or windows.
• Shower immediately and change into fresh clothing after being outside.
• Take your shoes off at the door.
• Use a heated eye mask to help alleviate sinus pressure.
• Use a saline rinse to flush out your sinuses after being outside.
• Vacuum carpets with a HEPA vacuum.
• Wear a KN95 or N95 mask when you go outside.

When nothing else eases the pain and pressure of sinus issues that occur during tule fog, see an allergist. Treating the allergen that triggers an inflammatory response is critical.

Premium Allergy & Respiratory Center is here to help you overcome the worst of your symptoms. When your allergies are well managed, you’re able to join your friends and family in favorite activities, even outdoors. Use the online scheduler or call to make an appointment.