So Ya Call This Winter?!?

a couple of tornado warnings made it to NE Pa while i was there Tuesday.
It was low 50° and a few showers passed by, but a nice day really.

 

Meadville and other parts of Crawford county were under the gun.

 

Between the cold and the critters we feed here the Ticks seem to be in control.....................

 

were infested with turkeys here, but we still have plenty of ticks...lol

 

It split and went around Oil City.

 

Speaking of winter control of bug populations. Thank God we don't have EAB. Those of you in the infestation areas, did you notice if the spread was noticeably slower in a year following a brutal cold winter or faster after mild winters?

 

Every time it gets warm enough, the pets come in with ticks. I had those bloody things. In the 80's they said the cockroaches would survive a nuclear winter. I think it would be the ticks.

 

No drought here. It's been raining like crazy. Just not the temps for snow.

 

Trails are snow covered (right now) but not frozen. Slednecks are riding along the highway vs. the trail.

 

It doesn't help....they're still uglier than sin on the corner eating life savers!

And I ain't believing that 4000 guesstimate one bit.......

 

I will do some more investigating. There are some websites that offer trail conditions and whatnot on them. I'll snoop around some more.

 

I don't have scientific data to back it up, but when we get a real winter here (couple weeks down in the single digits at night), the bugs (wasps, ticks, flies, mosquitoes, and all the other fun little bastages) seem much less prevalent the following summer. It's not that insects cannot survive freezing temperatures...just less of them do if the severity is high enough? I think a tick that doesn't overwinter on a host will not lay eggs in the spring.

 

The largest trouble with those sites is that they are hugely biased!

 

Good to know!

I wish it would drop to 35 below for 6 months here! I know a few people that have Lyme Disease already.

 

Not much of a winter here in Oregon, I don't believe it's snowed at all anywhere that's under 4000 foot above sea level. Sometimes February is our big snow month so I guess time will tell.