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Weather radar has picked up thousands of insects flying over Knox County, Texas, according to the National Weather Service of Norman, Oklahoma.
Rangers at Copper Breaks State Park in Quanah, Texas confirmed that the radar is picking up a large swarm of both grasshoppers and beetles. It is difficult to correlate a specific amount of insects to what the radar is seeing because it depends on the size and proximity of the insects as they fly, says Forrest Mitchell, Observations Program Leader at the National Weather Service of Norman, Oklahoma. They are swarming from the ground up to 2,500 feet, covering a distance of over 50 miles, he says.
“It’s fairly common during the warm season,” says Mitchell. “It’s a testament of the sensitivity of the radars we use.”