Impacts of warmer weather on mosquitoes

WEST FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — We have finally seen more rainfall hitting the valley, supplying moisture to fields, lawn, and gardens.

But, with the increased precipitation that also means more mosquitoes.

Last week, the Cass County Vector Control put up forty new traps in the metro area but aren’t seeing any changes in the number of mosquitoes being caught.

“We are seeing numbers right around high teens to low twenties, our threshold for spring is right around thirty-five or so, right now what we are seeing is very typical.” says Carter Woodley, Cass County Vector Control

The Cass County Vector Control is continuing to monitor places with standing water to terminate mosquito eggs before hatching.

This warmer weather has been having an effect on their life cycles allowing mosquitos to reproduce quicker.

“Our job is to go patrol and look for the standing water and sample this water and look for immature mosquitoes and then apply a granular pesticide to control those immature mosquitoes. This hot weather, does shorten that life cycle and speeds it up and they can actually hatch from eggs to become an adult mosquito much faster.” says Woodley

With the increased amount of moisture, it has been making employees’ tasks a little more difficult.

“So, what we are seeing is more of a typical summer around here. Obviously, the more rain, the more standing water there is, there is more opportunities to produce mosquitoes, so that is a challenge for us, but we do have the staff on board and we’re getting up and running and fully trained where we can kinda spread ourselves out and really do our job well to control all of those mosquitoes.” says Woodley

He adds there have been no cases of West Nile Virus detected so far this year.