Employees at the US Weather Service in San Diego saw rain clouds on their radar, but were unable to get confirmation of precipitation on the ground from observers. That’s when one local in the field looked up and discovered it was one of nature’s tiny wonders. Here
I’d like to see an estimate of the numbers of ladybugs. There must be dozens, or even hundreds.
Awww, they are so cute! And, boy, do they love to eat the bad bugs! I would see one (especially in their larval stage) and put it on my dogwood bush near an infestation of aphids and they had a feast!
Leave it to Joe to exaggerate the numbers out of all proportion.
When they detect a swarm of silverfish that large I’m heading under the bed.
In South Florida they have swarms of honeybees near the orange groves. I drove through one once. It was like a fog. The bee guts were so thick on my windshield the wipers almost stalled.
And then there are the 17 year locusts (cicadas) in the northeast that are just as bad.
We’ve got swarms of mayflies right now. They don’t bite but they cling to every surface and they end up coming indoors at every opportunity. In the fall it’s the Japanese beetles they swarm any sunny door or window, and try to hide out in any crack or crevice they can crawl into. They look like lady bugs but stink when you happen to crush them. They slowly digest themselves to death over the winter to when you find their hollowed out little bodies in front of the picture windows and doors in piles in the spring (and they still stink when you go to clean them up).
We get the fish flies here. One downriver community even has a fish fly festival. Not fun on a motorcycle. Number one they hurt when you hit them at speed. Number two they congregate under streetlights. Like riding on wet leaves.
Kim Kardashian’s butt?
What did I win?
Dat’s nothin. You should see the lake fly hatch on lake Winnebago every Mothers Day. The swarm is over 40 miles long and 20 miles wide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWABTWH1izg
And that is why the weather service needs spotters on the ground. ;-p
Mickey, couldn’t tell for sure but those look like what we call fish flys or others call mayflies. Never heard them called lake flies but makes sense as they lay their eggs in bodies of fresh water. Only live one day on average and leave heck of a mess to clean up.
~ 1975 I was working at my dad’s tire store in Rudyard Montana and there was a grasshopper swarm that came through. There were cars coming in with yellow hopper guts an inch thick from front to back… if they had sense to protect the radiator and get in.
The bastards blacked out the sun and cars were sliding off the road into ditches on hopper guts on the highway.
My friend in NM hates ‘hoppers’! lol.
May Flies are annoying, I agree.
As for the Lady Bugs, they’re useful and super cute. But don’t get a swarm of them in your house. Yeesh.
They all sound like bait to me.
Gone fishing, the Mayflies are hatching,ladybugs not so much, hard to get on a hook,I also like ladybugs eating all of the antifa dudes.
THAT is of Biblical proportions…
Maybe an Omen?
If they’re not bugs, they’re ‘features.’ Unless they’re bug-bugs.
Slightly related: there are NO software bugs. They’re all ‘mistakes.’ Unless you have bugs in your pants which cause you to make mistakes. Those are real buggers.
God’s pest control on patrol.
I’ll salute you and lay down my arms as you pass.
– Do4 The Bugman
I’m curious about their origins and the conditions that made this possible.
We give advice on how to minimize helping bad bugs and promoting natural ways to fight them. (read as – least chemical use possible)
Worth knowing how this phenomena came to be so it can be repeated when desired. A much smaller scale would still be tremendous for a neighborhood with problems.
It would have been funny if they’d formed a sky-penis