ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — The same weather that makes the grass grow and trees green up is also what brings out the official summer bird of Missouri and Illinois — the mosquito.
"It's looking like we're probably going to have a pretty rough mosquito season," James Sayers with St. Louis County Vector Control said.
A "pretty rough mosquito season" is not what we want to hear from the man in charge of monitoring St. Louis County's mosquito populations.
"We have about 240 trap sites throughout the county," Sayers explained. "We identify the mosquitoes that we trap and focus our control efforts in areas we are finding either high numbers of those particular types of mosquitoes that can make people sick or they are actually testing positive for disease in our lab."
Slightly cooler temperatures have kept mosquitoes at bay, but we all knew that wouldn't last forever. Sayers said the mosquito population is on a fast track: "It's rapidly progressing with the recent rains and the higher temperatures, it's set to pop pretty quick."
5 On your Side's Weather First Mosquito Forecast takes into account multiple factors. Our Meteorologists look at recent and forecasted rainfall, temperatures and wind speed.
One thing that will keep our mosquito forecast from hitting extreme is wind speeds. Mosquitos are grounded when winds clock in around 10 miles per hour or more.
And did you know mosquitoes don't like a lot of sunshine?
"Generally dusk and dawn and at night is when the Culex mosquitoes are most active and those are the ones that general carry disease here," Sayers said.