Hotter and drier spring has meant less mosquitoes and ticks this year

FOX 2 (WJBK) - The warm, dry spring we've had, could mean fewer biting pests like mosquitoes and ticks this summer.

"So really the big thing is where weather comes to impact ticks and mosquitoes is how hot it gets and how wet it is," said Mark Vanderwerp.

Mark Vanderwerp is FOX 2's favorite bug nerd. He's a guy that tried to defend ticks and mosquitoes early in our interview.

"So they have their own ecosystem and they're doing stuff both good and bad," said Vanderwerp said.

FOX 2: "Well that's your opinion, and we're all entitled to our own opinions."

"Hey you asked for mine," he quipped.

But the reason we're giving Mark a hard time is because Derek Kevra had a theory that our winter, while rough in March and April, wasn't overly cold - and he feared that meant the biting bugs would be bad this year.

"These are really complex systems when we're talking about mosquito lifecycles and disease transmission cycles, so by just changing one factor is not really clear what will happen," he said.

It's a whole lot of 'inside baseball' about species type and egg stage vs larvae stage but then he said this:

"Both mosquitoes and ticks survive in warm environments if it's wet enough," he said.

Wait, hold up?

"If you get a hot dry summer, not so good for either of them," he said.

We just wrapped up the fifth driest May ever and it's been hot lately. As Derek Kevra looks ahead, he does not see a wet pattern return to Michigan until at least mid-June.

"Mosquitoes, the larvae need that standing water puddles to reproduce in, and ticks people don't realize, actually need high humidity environments to survive because they actually dry out pretty quickly," he said.

There's a lot of summer left to go, and we can't stay this dry forever, but in the meantime maybe there's a small upside to our dry run.

"If you've got heat and wet, thumbs up for those things you'll have a bumper crop if you have a dry summer, not so much," he said.