2020’s latest scourge: 50-mile-wide swarm of flying ants
From the year that brought us murder hornets, famine-inducing locusts and the global coronavirus pandemic, comes the latest airborne scourge: a 50-mile-wide swarm of flying, and mating, ants.
The horny swarm currently copulating over England is so vast, it showed up on radar to the bafflement of meteorologists, the Telegraph reported Friday.
Weather watchers initially believed the weird “droplets” on their radar screens were rain clouds.
But that made no sense given the dry and otherwise cloudless weather being enjoyed below in London, Kent and Sussex, the report said.
Britain’s Met office later cleared the mystery up in a tweet.
“It’s not raining in London, Kent or Sussex, but our radar says otherwise,” they wrote. “The radar is actually picking up a swarm of #flyingants across the southeast Ant . . . During the summer ants can take to the skies in a mass emergence usually on warm, humid and windless days.”
Hundreds of residents were complaining about the airborne hoards of ants, which grow wings and enjoy a vast, mid-air orgy in mid-July each year.
The British have even given the phenomenon its own name day and hashtag: #flyingantday.
“Flying Ant Day” — the predicted high point of the pesky activity — is set to fall on July 31, the Telegraph reported.