Summer is hanging on here with above normal temperatures and lots of rain. We had 1.5 in. yesterday and overnight and almost 6 in. several days before that. That's good weather for breeding mosquitoes. I tried sitting outside this evening and got bit once so I sat in the garage and they followed me in and got bitten once more. I'm hoping for some cool fall weather arrives soon. Heat and humidity is OK after a long hard winter, but cool and dry weather is welcome after summer heat and humidity. I'm actually looking forward to cold even.
One trick is to get out a fan, point it at your seating area and put it on the lowest speed it's got so that it does not annoy the humans. You don't even need to feel the breeze in order for it to be sufficient to disrupt the mosquitos' ability to fly.
I agree with John. I prefer "portable" fans and have the Ryobi fans from Home Depot, they run on the same batteries as my husband's Ryobi tools.
Hey, Sarah. Welcome to the forum!!! First, congratulations on an awesome start by agreeing with me Such a great first post. Second, if you wish, you might introduce yourself by creating an Intro thread here. Folks will say "Hi" back and we can begin to get to know each other.
Our skeeters weren't bad this summer, but lately they seem to be increasing. Of course, we're talking FLORIDA mosquitos, which have been known to carry off small dogs and children....LOL.
They have been really bad here this year, but we have had a lot of rain, so they had lots of little puddles to raise their mosquito families in. The ones we have here are really tiny little things, so you often don’t even see them until they have attached somewhere and you feel the mosquito itch. Bobby has some of those mosquito coils and he also uses a fan and blows the smoke from the coil around on the front porch, which helps somewhat. I guess that might be one of the few things that I appreciate about colder weather is less bugs around.
The best mosquito repellent I have found is a Thermacell device. It clears an area about 15 feet in diameter, so if you are stationary it works spectacularly well. I first used one on a canoe trip down the Upper Yukon River in Canada. We had a group, and everyone wanted to eat with us as we had the only mosquito-free area in camp. Mosquito Magnets work well also, but they are expensive things that require use over several seasons to clear mosquitoes well. I have dealt with mosquitos in many areas of the world, and the mosquitoes we have in the spring here are the largest I have ever seen. They are the ones that overwinter. The pests get smaller later in the year, are more numerous, and are much quicker.