Whether your local climate conditions are warm and humid, cold and dry, or rainy and wet, the weather has a direct impact on pests and their behavior. Some climate conditions prompt pests to invade your home to meet three basic needs – food, water and shelter. Our pest weather guide can help you discover how your local weather affects your pest forecast.
Rainy, Wet Weather
Pest Forecast: Expect more pests to be invading your home.
Expect to see an more pests in and around your home as larger populations seek food. Specifically keep an eye out for the following: ants, cockroaches, hornets, spiders, crickets, ladybugs, yellow jackets, mice and rats. This is why:
- High moisture promotes pest reproduction and growth. Ants, especially, are more likely to reproduce in wet, warm climates.
- A higher population of pests result in a greater need for food. This means pests will travel beyond their normal areas to find food.
- Invasions may take place as pests travel to drier ground.
Excessive Rainfall and Flooding
Pest Forecast: Ants relocate to avoid flooded soil.
Excessive rainfall during a short period of time floods the soil, causing pests — especially ants — to relocate. Some pests escaping from the uninhabitable weather conditions will find shelter in a nearby location, often your home. Other facts include:
- Ants can quickly move their entire colony on short notice.
- Wall gaps and basement foundations are common areas for these new colonies.
- Heavy rain creates a surplus of ants, increasing the need for pest control services.
Dry Conditions
Pest Forecast: Expect more pests to be seeking water in and around your home.
While rain creates additional pest growth, dry conditions also promote pest invasions. The amount of pests may be fewer, but they will relentlessly hunt for some amount of water for their survival. More facts include:
- Low moisture outside encourages pests inside to find water.
- Ants, earwigs, millipedes, pill bugs, sow bugs, crickets and spiders are commonly the pests that will seek water indoors.
- Millipedes are known for migrating in the thousands from leaf litter, mulch or your lawn when they dry out – eventually invading homes standing in their way.
Extreme Drought
Pest Forecast: Fewer pests, more frequent invasions.
One benefit of dry springs and summers is less pests. Longer periods of dry weather or drought affect the food supply, eliminating large numbers of insects. What you can expect:
- With a reduced supply of food, scorpions and certain spiders venture past their normal habitats in search of a source of food.
- Pests might establish breeding sites in and around your home – including debris, bricks, rocks, firewood, and more.
Cool Weather
Pest Forecast: Bitter outside weather attracts pests into your warm home.
Pests likely to invade your home to escape the cooler temperatures include the box elder bug, cluster fly, ladybug and silverfish. More about them:
- Occasional invaders — such as overwintering pests — start migrating indoors in the late summer and early fall as the temperature decreases.
- These pests use walls, gaps and attics as their winter homes.
Period of drought, extended rainfall or extreme high or low temperatures can force pests to invade homes as a result of uninhabitable living conditions outside. Like people, pests will do whatever is necessary to survive. Understanding the relationship between weather and pests will help keep them out of your home. Schedule a pest evaluation today and a Frontline representative will come to your home for a complete analysis.