Health experts say several factors are to blame for a particularly bad mosquito season this year. Liz Dykstra, an entomologist from the Washington State Department of Health says it’s a perfect storm of factors at play. She says the warm weather, melting snowpack, and lots of still groundwater are the big reasons why we’re seeing so many mosquitoes.
“We’ve got several years of eggs just waiting for the right conditions and so then we have water coming over them and so now we’ve got a boom of mosquitoes,” Dykstra says. “If you’ve got areas where the water hasn’t covered in a while but you’ve still got mosquitoes laying there year after year you could have several years of eggs just waiting and then you get snow pack that’s melted and it spreads over where these eggs have been sitting for years and then you get a large number of mosquitoes.”
She added that the state is currently in peak mosquito season, about a month earlier than normal.
“We had a whole lot of snow pack this past winter so there’s that, and that, as that melts that can create flood water and standing water issues over time,” Dykstra says. “So you’ve got standing water so mosquitos breeding in that and that warmth just kind of perpetuates the cycle.”
She also says everyone needs to take precautions to protect themselves because not only can they cause itchy bites but they can carry diseases like West Nile virus.
“We do have West Nile virus in the state. It’s still here. It’s still bubbling along,” she says.
To protect yourself, Dykstra recommends using bug spray or insect repellent, wearing layers, or using mosquito nets.
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