Am I the only one noticing a huge drop in bugs this year in Iowa?

[rurallib]

Usually cutting grass or doing anything outdoors this time of year you get eaten alive.
This year, damn near nothing.

Normally I would cheer such a change, but with all the climate stuff going on, it makes me wonder if a lack of bugs is a harbinger of something bad coming? No bugs - no food for small critters or breakdown of waste = problems up the food chain?

Am I being paranoid?

[leftofcool]

1. We have them all here in Kentucky. Thanks alot for sending them.

[rurallib]

3. well, thank you then

actually, you can keep them.

[DUgosh]

2. They are spending their summer

Alive and well in south Texas

[rurallib]

4. and we thank you also

[Warpy]

5. There were always few bugs here in the high desert

unless you were in half a mile or so of a river. I usually managed to get bitten by something or other by this time, one or two itchy bites telling me they're not all completely discouraged.

This year has been extremely hot and very dry, so no bites thus far. There was a storm here on Saturday night with heavy hail and flooding and there have been widely scattered storms since then. That might or might not be enough to hatch a few hungry bugs but probably won't be.

I honestly don't miss bugs, it's one reason I live out here. I do miss a regular monsoon season instead of the 20+ years of drought we've had here.

[Moostache]

6. That is the insidious nature of climate change...

Locally, things may appear totally normal in one area and completely out of line in another and its easy for deniers to point to the normal areas in their false equivalencies and claim nothing is really happening...but as the records for aggregate temperature continue to fall month by month and year by year in a now unbroken chain, we will start to see more and more "aberrant" events and fewer and fewer "normal" ones. All the way up to the point of no return (if we haven't already crossed that threshold now.

I think only the people ignoring the signals are being paranoid...afraid to face the fact that real, systemic and sustained changes are going to happen to the globe, and not all humans alive today will die before the worst of those effects become a crushing reality. I used to believe I was old enough to be in the group that will die before the really nasty stuff hits, but I am losing faith in that with every passing month.

[rurallib]

8. I thought I would avoid the really bad also but as you say ..........

[elleng]

7. Good for Iowa (and my brother's family,)

bad for me in Maryland, where they appear to have flown!