Not the news you want to hear. But the latest buzz we are being told is that the upcoming mosquito season could be the worst we've seen in years, at least in one state.
While summer is still a ways away, Minnesota's skeeter season is going to be bad according to Alex Carlson with Metropolitan Mosquito Control District.
"The biggest factor that will affect this summer is actually a lot of the rain that we had last summer," says Carlson. "There's one species that we have that overwinters as larvae, so they actually hatched the fall the year before. And so we did surveillance from those last fall and we found much higher numbers than we've seen in at least five years, and we're predicting it's going to be about four times higher than last year."
That species is known as Cattail Mosquitos. And they're biters. Really, really bad biters. They tend to emerge around the 4th of July and they've been mostly absent the last three years.
"They prefer to bite people and they can be a little bit more aggressive," Carlson explains. "They're a little bit bigger than some of the other species that we see, so people will notice them."
Oh, good.
2024 was an unusual year for mosquitoes in the Twin Cities. There was above average rain throughout May, June, and July, but high mosquito numbers did not follow likely due to the preceding three years of drought conditions and low numbers of some of the more common nuisance mosquito species.
After a year of rain, many of those will bounce back in 2025 - and if we see similar rainfall totals as 2024, some may return in big numbers. But don't expect it to show up until later in the summer thanks to dry winter conditions. Spring may be slow for emerging insects including mosquitoes and black flies. But by mid-summer, you are likely going to notice them in big numbers.
More of this spring snow or rain could change things however. Carlson advises to wear long sleeves with light colors - and of course use plenty of bug spray if you're out and about later in the summer. You've been warned.