WATCH: If you’re out for a walk this evening, take a moment to see if you can spot what’s missing. As Tom Vernon tells us, a summer staple is absent.
EDMONTON – While the lack of precipitation this season has farmers raising the alarm, it’s good news for the mosquito situation in Edmonton.
“It’s not quite our lowest on record, but it’s approaching that level,” said the city’s resident bug expert Mike Jenkins.
“It’s all due to the precipitation,” he explained. There was relatively low snow volume from the winter and when that snow melted it happened slowly, which didn’t allow moisture to pool. In the spring, there wasn’t a lot of rain to fill those pools either.
“Areas … that in a normal year would be probably ankle to knee deep in water and producing thousands of mosquitoes right now are totally dry,” said Jenkins.
But, that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods just yet.
“If all of these things get filled in with one heavy downpour, all of the eggs that are basically resting in the grasses right now could get activated and all of these sites could start producing mosquitoes again within the next week.”
It would take only four to five days to see a boom in the skeeter population, said Jenkins.
“The mosquitoes will come and lay their eggs in this kind of habitat and just wait for the next rainfall.”
The dry conditions might not make mosquitoes happy, but they’re great for other insects.
“Ants and wasps are some that are definitely doing really well,” said Jenkins. “Yellow jacket numbers, we’re getting more calls now than we usually get in August.”
Caterpillars are also doing well. Trees are stressed in hot, dry conditions and can’t defend as well against them.
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