Skeeter season

Not the minor league baseball team, the kind we all hate.

Despite dire predictions of an even worse-than-usual mosquito invasion this spring, the swarm of activity actually thinned out in May, after two out-of-control months buoyed by rain and unseasonably high temperatures.

“There has been a dramatic decline,” said Mike McMahan, who oversees mosquito control in Harris County Precinct 3.

Jim Ryan, mosquito control director in Brazoria County, said the bugs were “almost nonexistent” there last week. And in Fort Bend County, until recent rains brought a resurgence, there were “hardly any,” according to Weldon Sheard, vector control supervisor.

It turns out mosquito prediction is a tenuous sport. Said Jim Dennett, a Harris County mosquito control research manager, “People have spent their entire careers trying to model and predict pest mosquito populations, but they have yet to make me a believer … things can change so quickly.”

As we have learned, cold weather and drought don’t really do much to affect the mosquito menace. We’re pretty much on our own, so assume the worst and stock up on the DEET.

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