Mosquito population rising

Well, if you've been swatting away tons of mosquitoes lately or you feel like you can't go outside without getting bitten, you are not alone. Hillsborough County says they are dealing with some record numbers, which is why crews were out aerial spraying early this morning. FOX 13's Ariel Pacenzi explains what's going on in the county's game plan. Now we've been getting a ton of calls from around the county, but specifically south Tampa and residents aren't wrong. Last month, Hillsborough County found 142 mosquitoes in one of its south Tampa traps. But when they checked that same trap Tuesday, there were 18,000. This was full to about here, which might not seem like a lot, but mosquitoes are very tiny. So this that was the fullest trap we've seen in the last couple years. The reason why is our drought. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in the soil, but they need water to kick start their life cycle to go from eggs to flying adults. Without that rain, we are not seeing what we call hatch offs until very recently. Compare that 18,000 to the normal average of about 4 to 6,000 in a trap. All those mosquitoes have since been sent off for disease testing and the county's waiting for the results. It is Egypt. I is a species that can spread dengue and chingunya. A few other things. So we'll pull out any eighties Egypt. I in that trap and send them out for testing. In the meantime, crews conducted aerial spraying south of Gandhi early Thursday morning with more plan for Friday. At the same time, county scientists are busy putting treatments to the test. That way we can effectively treat these species that are extremely annoying. They study these insects at every stage of their life cycle. These are mosquito eggs. Yeah, that way they can make sure the county's products are actually working. This one came from Wolf Creek, so Apollo Beach and that the insects haven't built up resistance so we can more or less have a better quality of life in Tampa. Aerial Cencia FOX 13 News. So if you feel like your Hillsborough County neighborhood needs to be sprayed or you want to look at the county's online spring map, just head over to FOX 13 website dot FOX 13 news dot com. We've got it all on our website over there, so check it out.