There's a Bumper Crop of Mosquitoes this August

One mosquito, two mosquito, three mosquito, more. These pesky insects are everywhere.

The question is: Why now? 

Well, with late July’s alternating wet and dry weather, large pools of water collected in Westlake and other suburbs, giving the winged insects several places to lay their eggs and multiply, Cuyahoga County Board of Health Deputy Director Dave Covell said. 

Typically, the county’s pest control experts can go out and mitigate mosquito populations by killing the eggs before they hatch. But given all of the pools and puddles of water that didn’t dry up during the repeated cycles of rainy weather, there was no stopping the swarms, he said. 

Now they’re everywhere, and they’re going to keep coming through the end of September. The average life of a mosquito is 10 days. In that time, females will feed on warm-blooded animals and people, then lay more eggs in stagnant water. 

The insect larva take 10 days to develop into a mosquito, and the process repeats itself until the weather cools, he said. 

Spraying insecticides won’t do much good, but Covell suggests a couple ways to combat the nuisance. 

“Sure, there are wives tales on alleviating the itching or combating the pests, but the only tips I strongly recommend from now until the last week of September is avoidance, wearing long sleeves or pants and using insect repellant."