Edmonton has been seeing unsteady weather this spring and that has left some wondering how the mosquito situation is right now.
Mike Jenkins, senior biological sciences technologist with the city, said the cool spring has caused mosquito hatching to happen much later than usual.
“Our first spring hatch usually comes out late April, early May, and basically came out last weekend,” Jenkins explained.
“We’ve had a pretty good run so far and May has been pretty mosquito-free until now.”
According to Jenkins, there are a bunch of different species right now because of this, which has mosquitoes coming out in the day and night.
The wet weather earlier in the week looked to spell bad news for those looking to avoid mosquitoes, but Jenkins thinks the water soaked into the ground too fast for habitats to be developed.
“A lot of that water seems to be absorbed pretty quickly by the plants that are out there and it hasn’t formed any sort of mosquito habitat,” he said.
“Our crews are out there and treating anywhere where we are finding the hatching, but the hatching is actually not as much as we had expected.”
Watch below: Survive mosquito season in Edmonton with a few tips from Buzz Boss
The mosquito numbers are not huge right now, he said, but if Edmonton gets more rain that could change.
“We started to get into our summer species by this time last year, whereas this year it is basically just the first spring hatch and our summer species are still to come,” Jenkins said.
For those concerned about the Zika virus coming to the Edmonton area on mosquitoes, Jenkins said the suckers that carry the virus cannot survive in our climate and it is extremely unlikely we’ll see any cases in Canada.
Jenkins couldn’t provide a prediction on whether this will be a bad year for the blood-suckers but explained it will all depend on the weather.
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