Columbia graduate student Shannan Sweet posted this YouTube video of the insane swarms of mosquitoes that have overwhelmed researchers on the Arctic Tundra.
Sweet herself has been studying the plants of the tundra in
University of Alaska entomologist Derek Sikes told the Alaska Dispatch that no one is monitoring the
The Alaska Dispatch agrees that it's quite nasty, though:
Alaska's blood-hungry mosquito hordes are nastier than they've been in years, and they show no signs of letting up. In fact, the swarming predators seem to be growing in number...
In her email to Business Insider, Sweet suggested some reasons why this is a particularly bad summer:
- The summer of 2012 (especially July) was extremely wet (i.e. there was A LOT of rain).
- There was an unusually large amount of snow this winter/spring ... more than anyone I know had ever seen, and it just kept snowing into June, which meant a very late spring melt, and a late emergence of mosquitoes. So, when they did come out, they came out in full force.
- After the snow did finally melt, and temperatures went above freezing, it got really HOT. Record breaking temperatures (reaching nearly 90 degrees F, which is pretty extreme for the
arctic tundra).