It may have been well over 100 here in Vegas this past week, but at least we have very few insects [ahem] bugging us.
That most romantic of insects, the ephemeral mayfly – which survives for just one day as an adult – has made an impact in an unlikely setting: the radar images produced by US National Weather Service.
If you only lived for a day, you’d want to make sure you quickly found a partner. To ensure that this happens, mayflies synchronise their emergence from their aquatic, larval stage. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, so many of the flies emerged at once from the Mississippi that they showed up on the weather service’s Doppler radar as bright pink, purple and white patches.
The patches persisted for 10 to 20 minutes as the mayflies were borne away south-southeast on the wind.
[Comment deleted – Violation of Posting Guidelines. – ed.]
The link is now changed to:
http://newscientist.com/gallery/dn15018-pick-of-the-pictures/2
as it is part of a large number of pictures over the past year or so.
I remember the mayflies when I was a kid… almost like out of a horror movie, cept they are harmless beside clogging up every air duct and radiator in your house and car!
Almost as much fun driving into cloud of mayflies as a cloud of corn moths.
Mayfly to mate: “What do you mean ‘not tonight, I’ve got a headache’?!!”
They are mayflies. It’s June!
What _is_ it with names?
Jack Black
Barry White
Elizabeth Smart
Marvin Gay