Brits are bracing themselves for the dreaded 'flying ant day' after a huge mile-long swarm was caught on a weather radar on the south coast - and more could be on the way.
The Met Office picked up the ants on a rain radar on Friday, July 7, as people took to social media reporting sightings of the winged insect. The forecaster explained that flying ants are usually picked up on their radars at this time of the year, over the space of about a week.
The swarms appear on the weather radars and can be so big that they look similar to rainfall, but the Met Office can check their weather gauges to confirm if the mass is rain or flying ants. But the creatures are less likely to fly in the rain, and it can be more difficult for the Met Office to tell if it is ants or the rainfall during wet weather, forecaster Simon Partridge explained.
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"Every year around this time we do pick them up on the rain radar," he acknowledged. "At the moment it's harder to tell because we've got so many showers and the ants look like showers."
"When we do get the rain, they don't fly as much. It's generally the southern parts of the UK where we tend to notice it most."
Simon added on Saturday: "We haven't seen any swarms today, but it doesn't mean they're not there as there are so many showers around. They were picked up on the radar on Friday. It was much drier and it was easier to spot them.
"They can be seen several miles across – they look like very heavy showers. On Friday it was about a mile. They're an interesting phenomenon, and it's always this time of year and usually over about a week or so."
Flying ants are spotted when males and new queens leave the nest to mate, with many ant colonies doing so on the same day. But contrary to popular belief, according to the Royal Society of Biology there is not always just one 'flying ant day' – in fact, flying ants are typically spotted on as many as 96% of days between June and September.
