After a relatively pest-free summer, there has been a recent surge of mosquito activity in Saskatoon.

Georgiana Antochi-Crihan, the City of Saskatoon’s entomologist, says each trap is catching about 25 mosquitos each evening, up from last year’s trap counts of just five. The ten-year average is 15.

She attributes the spike in numbers to two things, one being the rain we got at the beginning of August.

“The second is temperature. When we have scorchers like this when we’re getting into the thirties, that’s really speeding up their development time. Usually, mosquitos need 1-2 weeks to finish their development from egg to adult. With heat waves like this, we’re seeing that pushed to that one-week window.”

She adds that the City does treat sloughs and grass for the pests, but residents are also encouraged to help the cause by dumping out any standing water in their back yards and cleaning out eave troughs.

“The best thing you can do is to make sure you’re changing out that water every week. So, if you’ve got water collecting in your bird baths, buckets or drip trays under your planters, you want to be dumping that water or swapping it for new water.”

She adds that we are almost at the end of the mosquito season, but any more precipitation and hot weather would prolong the season into the fall months.