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8/1/2012
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No, you're not seeing things. The mosquitoes have been bad this past week, but the city's mosquito guy says it all depends on perspective.
The number from all those traps that Mike Jenkins has spread around the city is 145.
"This last week has been our biggest mosquito population so far this year."
Yet Jenkins, a biological sciences technician for the city, stresses that 145 is less than half of the 300 recorded this week last year.
"It's definitely more mosquitoes this week than we've had all summer long. Sixty per cent of our total population for the entire year has come this past week," says Jenkins. "It's definitely a big increase over what we've seen so far this year."
Jenkins says another way of looking at it is that 145 is our ten year average.
"If you look over the last five years it is only about 90 but that's because we had years like 2008, which was one of our lowest mosquito years on record and had an average of only seven mosquitoes per trap during this week that year."
Considering what could happen the rest of the year, if we have just an average rain fall the rest of the way, Jenkins says it's very likely the adult population of mosquitoes will die off. And, likely quite rapidly. (sj/ks)
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