Hurricane Sally brought a lot of rain to Southwest Florida when it passed by as a tropical storm. A new concern due to all the wet weather is more pesky mosquitoes.Crews are all over Sanibel Island Tuesday checking to see if there are more mosquitoes than normal.
Lee County Mosquito Control District told us mosquitoes that lay their eggs in the water can carry West Nile virus. But the water can also kill other breeds of mosquitoes.A pool of water surrounds Bobby and JoAnn Vines’ house on is computer science engineering. They’ve rented for about a decade and never seen as much water as they got from Sally, even during a hurricane.
“We just never comprehended that a foot of water would fall continuously,” Bobby said.
“We’d open the front door, and everything looked OK,” JoAnn said. “Then, we opened it again and the water had breached over the little step. We kept measuring, looking down, seeing, trying to figure out if it was coming in the house.”The Vines are not alone. Standing water is still covering many yards after Sally slowly moved over the island, dumping more than 20 inches of rain over the weekend as a tropical storm.
“Just because we had rain doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily mean that we’re going to have a big emergence of mosquitoes,” said Eric Jackson, the deputy director of Lee County Mosquito Control District.Jackson said control district isn’t taking chances. Crews are out in full force, checking for eggs in the water.
Jackson told us the heavy rain could actually help keep the mosquito population down.
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