Recent heavy rainfall has led to a sharp increase in mosquito activity across Winnipeg, with city officials warning the situation could worsen if wet weather continues.<\/p>\n
Standing water left behind by weeks of rain has created ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes, driving up trap counts across much of Winnipeg, particularly in the southern half of the city.<\/p>\n
The increase has also led to a spike in demand for residential mosquito control services.<\/p>\n
“The last two weeks has been pretty intense comparatively to past wet seasons,” said Jordan Lavin, chief operating officer of the company Mosquito.Buzz. Standing water left by the heavy rainfall “is what mosquitoes love from a breeding perspective,” he said.<\/p>\n
His company has seen an uptick in new customers in recent weeks, as homeowners look for ways to make their yards more comfortable during the peak of summer, Lavin said.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg is seeing “increased adult mosquito activity,” said David Wade, the supervisor of the city’s insect control branch.<\/p>\n
Trap counts have recently averaged around 40 mosquitoes per trap per day across the city, he said. That’s higher than this time last year, when conditions were much drier, but in line with what the city would expect following a wet June.<\/p>\n
The highest trap counts recently have been in parts of Charleswood and St. Vital, although Wade said those hot spots can shift depending on weather conditions.<\/p>\n
Whether mosquito numbers continue to rise will depend largely on how much rain falls over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
“The mosquitoes that are out right now will be around for two to three weeks,” Wade said. “If we don’t get much rain for the rest of July and August, then the mosquito numbers will decrease.”<\/p>\n
Trap counts are part of the city’s “adulticiding factor analysis”<\/a> \u2014 the measure it uses to determine whether to fog to kill adult mosquitoes. Right now, the level is at “medium,”<\/a> which means adulticiding won’t be considered.<\/p>\n If significant rainfall continues, however, the index could rise into the “high” level for nuisance mosquitoes, potentially triggering citywide fogging the numbers.<\/p>\n Winnipeg has enough DeltaGard insecticide in reserve to complete at least two rounds of citywide fogging if it’s needed. Wade said.<\/p>\n The city is also working to identify replacement products for future seasons, after the company that makes DeltaGard discontinued it in 2023.<\/p>\n While rain creates more mosquito breeding sites, strong winds following storms have at times grounded helicopters used to apply larvicide, Wade said.<\/p>\n At St. Vital Park, one of the areas with the city’s highest recent trap counts, Vladyslav Pavliv said he has noticed a dramatic increase in mosquitoes.<\/p>\n “There is just a huge amount of them, and they’re everywhere,” he said.<\/p>\n Lavin said residents can help reduce mosquito populations around their homes by emptying standing water from containers such as buckets, tires and eavestroughs, and by trimming dense vegetation where mosquitoes rest during the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recent heavy rainfall has led to a sharp increase in mosquito activity across Winnipeg, with city officials warning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,246826,267360,275448,9950,275449,246827,274484,123784,22073],"class_list":["post-777111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-wade","tag-heavy-rainfall","tag-jordan-lavin","tag-mosquito","tag-mosquito-breeding","tag-mosquito-control","tag-standing-water","tag-weather-conditions","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}