Mosquitoes launch aerial assault on Saskatoon

It has all the ingredients for a perfect storm -- of mosquitoes.

Take one cool spring.

Addmoisture. Lots of moisture.

And then spike the temperature.

Presto -- it's slap and swear time.

"Conditions are ideal for mosquito development," said City of Saskatoon Entomologist Jeff Boone.

And Boone knows. He captures the pesky critters every night in a device called a "New Jersey light trap." Then they're counted in the morning, And the numbers tell the story.

Instead of catching ten or 20 mosquitoes, the traps are yielding hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the bugs. The only real good news is that the number of mosquitoesthat can carry the West Nile virus is low.

The city is doing its part to keep the population explosion in check with crews spraying standing water. But, like every year, a lot is going to depend on the weather.

It's a similar story inRegina.

The city monitors about a thousand sites where the bugs lay eggs, but the amount of standing water is such that the potential breeding grounds havetripled this year. As the weather stays warm and the eggs hatch, the situation will get worse before it improves.