Mosquitoes, Ticks Are Coming for Us All This Summer

America is about to be hit with a major infestation of ticks and mosquitoes, with the National Pest Management Association's chief entomologist predicting a "pretty buggy spring and summer." Popular Science reports this year's unusually warm winter—the sixth warmest ever recorded in the US—means an insect boom is likely in most states. "You need a bitter cold to kill them off," a pest control expert in Rhode Island tells the Providence Journal. That didn't happen this winter, and a predicted warm and wet spring isn't going to help anything.

The National Pest Management Association recently released its Bug Barometer, which predicts unusually plentiful ticks and mosquitoes in most of the country (the Pacific Northwest will be spared those pests but could see an increased ant problem). A wet spring could also send cockroaches scurrying for shelter in people's homes in the Southwest, CBS Sacramento reports. According to Outside Magazine, one of the biggest worries is an explosion of Lyme disease-carrying ticks in the Northeast just in time for hiking season on the Appalachian Trail. And climate change could mean this is all just the start of a new normal. "The conditions are changing," an entomologist at the Cornell Institute for Climate Smart Solutions tells PopSci. "It's just not the way it used to be." (Heads up: This mosquito-fighting tactic doesn't work.)