When you are outside in North Texas there is definitely an issue you will face this time of year.
“I’ve got plenty of bites already,” bridge painter John Warren said.
He and his crew talked about mosquitoes.
“They're a problem and they eat me up out here sometime,” bridge painter Paul Black said.
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The extremely wet spring caused a boom in the mosquito population.
“All the rain we've had is really allowed for a lot of breeding sites, as we will call them, or habitats for the mosquitoes to survive in,” Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Entomologist Sonja Swiger said.
Dallas and Tarrant counties and some cities have started night spraying for mosquito control. Some areas have seen positive tests of West Nile Virus in mosquito samples.
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“We will definitely continue to see a rise of the mosquitoes that do carry West Nile and that's why our programs are out looking at them right now,” Swiger said. “They'll keep watching them for the next couple months because we're really just kind of getting started into West Nile season.”
Drier weather will not help.
“We usually see more of them when we have drier conditions which sounds kind of funny but it has to do with where they like to grow,” Swiger said. “They actually have a preference for stagnant water that's dirty.”
To help prevent mosquito bites the CDC recommends you use insect repellent with DEET, wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, and dump, drain and empty any standing water around your home.
Something the painters prepared for. “We'll be out there this evening,” Warren said. “We start seeing a bunch of bugs we'll just spray ourselves do that put on some protection.
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Tarrant County Mosquito Control
