4 June
That most romantic of insects, theephemeral mayfly – which survives for just one day as an adult – has made an impact in an unlikely setting: the radar images produced by US National Weather Service.
If you only lived for a day, you'd want to make sure you quickly found a partner. To ensure that this happens, mayflies synchronise their emergence from their aquatic, larval stage. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, so many of the flies emerged at once from the Mississippi that they showed up on the weather service's Doppler radar as bright pink, purple and white patches.
The patches persisted for 10 to 20 minutes as the mayflies were borne away south-southeast on the wind.
(Image: NOAA)
That most romantic of insects, theephemeral mayfly – which survives for just one day as an adult – has made an impact in an unlikely setting: the radar images produced by US National Weather Service.
If you only lived for a day, you'd want to make sure you quickly found a partner. To ensure that this happens, mayflies synchronise their emergence from their aquatic, larval stage. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, so many of the flies emerged at once from the Mississippi that they showed up on the weather service's Doppler radar as bright pink, purple and white patches.
The patches persisted for 10 to 20 minutes as the mayflies were borne away south-southeast on the wind.
(Image: NOAA)
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