The Summer of the Gallinippers

 

This has been a hard growing season. Although rain has fallen, it has been in concentrated dumps over a day or two, with little rain otherwise.  July, for example, saw 8.5" overall, more or less, but almost all of that fell on three days.  I got 3.6" on the 28th, and soon thereafter had my first sightings of the Psorophora ciliata mosquito, aka the gallinipper.

At first, I assumed they were pseudo-mosquitoes--there are a few insects that look like giant mosquitoes but aren't--but these were real.  And as the University of Florida notes, they were aggressive.  The good news is that they're relitively slow-moving and easy to see.

 The article also mentions that they lay their eggs in damp soil, and they tend to emerge after heavy rains flood otherwise dry areas.  A three-plus-inch rainfall will do that.  They were only around for a few days, then diminished, as August turned dry again.

August was very dry, with less than 2.5" overall, 1.75" of which fell on a single day.  I got about 1.5" of rain in the first 24 days of September, then Hurricane Helene blew through, dropping over 10" in 3 days.

Not a drop of rain has fallen since then, which is now almost a month ago, but the gallinippers are still causing problems, although their numbers are down over the last couple of weeks.  Even a light frost hasn't crimped their style.

Presumably they've laid their eggs in more soil that's hopefully dry most of the time.  Their numbers are somewhat smaller than the more ubiquitous mosquitoes, like the Asian Tigers, but they're more bothersome nonetheless.