Ready? Mosquito Surge Very Possible for Central Minnesota

I feel like we have skated by pretty easily the last few years as far as the mosquito population has gone.

DROUGHT 2 YEARS  AGO

Drought conditions a couple of years ago has made it so that we haven't had to deal with the mosquito population as much as what we have had to deal with in other years.  It's been so nice.  There was always the joke that the state bird of Minnesota was the mosquito.  Yuck

That is about to change.

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

Experts on mosquitos have been testing areas of land where mosquitos live, breed and hatch.  And it looks as though there will be a mosquito surge right around the 4th of July weekend.  Great.  Just when everyone wants to be outside to partake in all the celebrations, activities, parades and fireworks.  All outdoor activities.

The crazy thing is that even though we have had a bunch of rain this year.  Too much, really.  The mosquito population is due to all of the rain we got in 2024.

2024 was an unusual year for mosquitoes - the Twin Cities saw above average rain throughout May, June, and July, but high mosquito numbers did not follow. This is likely due to the preceding three years of drought conditions and low numbers of some of the more common nuisance 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.

Now, that we have had a ton of rain for the beginning of this summer season, looks like the mosquito population will be bad this year, and next year too.  Even though we had a drought the years prior to last year, which isn't great, but the mosquito population was also down.  I'm not complaining about that.

LET'S PREPARE

That's about the only good thing to come out of a drought.  Less mosquitos.

The MMCD Entomology lab has developed a model to predict the abundance of cattail mosquitoes (Coquilletiddia perturbans), a unique species that hatches the previous fall, overwinters in the water as larvae, and emerges around the 4th of July. This species has been mostly absent over the past three years due to drought conditions impacting the marshes that make up their habitat. However, the MMCD model projects a high number of cattail mosquitoes returning in 2025:

Time to go out and get a bunch of repellent.  The kind that repels both mosquitos and ticks too.  Those little buggers thrive in wet conditions.

Happy Summer! ZAP!