If you’ve been swatting more than the usual number of mosquitoes since Halloween, you’re not alone. You know the mosquitoes are bad when the folks in the county’s mosquito control division can hardly get out of their trucks on the Bolivar Peninsula.
Why are the mosquitoes so bad?
Some of the weather patterns that are pushing Hurricane Ida away from Galveston County are pushing clouds of mosquitoes this way.
Between Galveston and Beaumont, there are miles of marshes in sparsely populated areas — meaning those wetlands are never sprayed. Saltwater mosquitoes have been hatching in those marshes, and the strong winds that have been coming from the northeast have carried them our way. The mosquitoes can cover 20 miles a day, riding the winds.
To make things worse, fall is a tough time of year for the mosquito fighters.
Mosquitoes are most active just after sundown. When the weather is cool, the mosquitoes hug the grass, where they are sheltered from pesticides. The pesticide used by the county isn’t effective below 60 degrees. It is oil-based and becomes too viscous to penetrate the waxy coating on the mosquitoes’ scales. Those cool evenings that made evening walks so pleasant about a week ago were bad news for the folks fighting mosquitoes.
It’s something of a trick getting the pesticides on the mosquitoes before the temperature falls. At this time of year, prime time for spraying is limited to 45 to 90 minutes a day. And it’s pointless to spray with the winds above 14 mph. Those same winds that have pushed the mosquitoes this way have grounded planned flights.
The mosquito control department was planning to spray on the Bolivar Peninsula today and on Galveston on Wednesday. But the weather plays a huge role in whether those plans become reality.
The mosquito forecast includes some good and bad news.
The bad is that you can expect more trouble in 10 to 14 days. The high tides we’ve seen in the past couple of days have covered mosquito eggs that had been high and dry for a year. Those eggs are still viable.
The good news is that this should all be over in about seven weeks. Circle Dec. 15 on your calendar. That’s the date when the mosquito control department usually pulls in its crews from night shifts to day shifts, meaning the war on mosquitoes is over for another year.
