On Sat, 19 May 2007 11:00:32 -0500, A Muzi <
[email protected]>
wrote:
[sni]
>I used to visit Seattle regularly and was impressed that although it may
>rain 2 or 3 times during a ride, it's dry. Dry, no kidding. Dry enough
>that window screens for mosquitos are not necessary. Living in a moist
>place, seeing open unscreened windows in a bedroom was at first quite
>disconcerting.
>
>Chalo makes a good point about extremes. A little dusting of snow, which
>would go both unnoticed and unreported here, will bring out roadbuilding
>machinery to Seattle's expressways and carnage all around.
Dear Andrew,
You could be right . . .
But the dry-means-no-mosquitoes theory would suggest that the upper
Arkansas River valley has no mosquitoes, that the insect repellent we
are starting to slather on is pointless, and that all the magpies in
Pueblo weren't killed by mosquito-borne West Nile fever a few years
ago--the magpies used to be as common as robins here, but now they're
rarer than hawks.
It's always fun when visitors refuse insect repellent. You get to
listen to them complain about both the mosquitoes and the cactus as we
stroll across the prairie bluffs.
The damn things can breed in four days, so even our occasional puddles
lead to clouds of mosquitoes that will follow you for a mile. Here's a
typical Pueblo newspaper spring mosquito story:
http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1179249170/2
A friend who lives in Seattle thinks that the explanation for its lack
of mosquitoes is that the geography, vegetation, and dry summers lead
to a lack of the standing water that they need to breed.
I don't think much of my friend's theory, but you're right about the
results--Seattle houses rarely have screens because mosquitoes are so
scarce, and my friend loves to mention occasional dry Seattle summers
with water rationing and dying lawns.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel