Weird, wild stuff

One word, two syllab…
*!Pollen!*
Bless you.
Like locust plagues of Biblical prophesy, this area has been overrun so much the otherwise unseen particles are now taking over the world…or at least the parking lots. Over the past week or so, it's been at ridiculous levels. It is literally piling up around here. Let me break it down for you.
The amount of pollen in the air is measured by a tool creatively named a ‘Pollen Count’. The PC calculated by the number of grains of pollen in a cubic meter. A moderate count is 31-60; High is 61-120; anything over 120 is considered extremely high. With those parameters in mind, the high we have going on here makes Cheech and Chong look like card-carrying members of the anti-drug lobby.
On Monday in the ATL, the pollen count hit 5,499. Math’s never been my strong suit, so you might want to crunch the numbers yourself; but according my calculations, this is about 43.835 times what the count can be to still fall in the ‘high’ and 91.65 times the moderate range. Meanwhile…

Vehicles everywhere are covered yellow.
I drive into work and yellow pollen kicks up like I’m driving down a dirt road back home.
People are outside wearing surgical masks.
If you’re outside long enough, you can feel it when you breathe.
Warnings are issued to stay indoors as much as possible.
People are missing work because they can’t breathe or see if they leave the house.
Car washes across town are cleaning house; it’s gotten so ridiculous that if you keep your stub and it’s been 48 hours or less, they’ll give you a free carwash. Craziness.

But what gets me is the metrics of the pollen count. I don’t understand how the chart can be so skewed. I mean, this happens every year (not to this degree, but counts still are up to 2000 or more) and moderate is still considered 31-60. Something just seems a little off to me when the count of anything is over 90x the moderate amount. It doesn't make sense...like Hillary winning "Dancing With The Stars" or the presidency. Can you imagine this in the world of sports? Some guy’s batting a moderate .260; then some schmo is batting 22.500. That’s just crazy talk. Or with food? A RDA of 2,000 calories as moderate would be 180,000; the 65 grams of fat would be 5,800. I've met someone like that before…oh yeah, Archie’s first girlfriend. (Playin' bro...just playin'.)
Anyway, just wanted to give you non-southern dwellers to get an idea of this pollen thing.