Australian mosquitos are optimised for getting through kangaroo hide, which makes a leather that is favoured for motorcyclists’ protective gear because of its unusual toughness.
One time a Hexham grey (Ochlerotatus alternans mosquito) settled on the tarmac at Williamtown RAAF Base. The erks mistook it for one of the Navy’s S-70B-2 ASW helicopters, and pumped 500 litres of avtur into it before they realised their mistake.
I don’t have a very strong horror reaction to animals; I’ve known people who get the horrors from bats and from snakes, and I know of that reaction to spiders, but none of them bother me. In fact I find bats and snakes beautiful. And your reason for finding spiders less bad weighs a fair bit with me; when I spot one inside I usually transport it outside rather than killing it (except for black widows!). But then there was the time last year when C spotted a spider on our ceiling, and I climbed up with a drinking glass and a sheet of paper to trap it—and then miscounted the steps on our stepladder and took a fall. But the spider didn’t make its escape, so I was able to deposit it outside our front door . . .
(And then a few days later I had a medical appointment, and one of the routine questions was, “Have you fallen?”)
Apropos of the title, I just saw an article about someone using a radio telescope to study how lightening bolts start. One tid bit was a 10% reduction in lightening in early 2020, because of COVID lock down reducing pollution.
We have noticeably different weather patterns in the Spring of 2020 due to (undiscussed in local media, but assumed to be) less pollution. Normally we have severe storms in the area, but they generally do not penetrate the city-center due to greenhouse gas emissions. All bets were off for the 2020 “tornado season”
What was specifically different about the weather last spring? My research background is urban micrometeorology, so I’m both confused and intrigued…
Normally when storm systems blow into my part of the country, they come in the from the west (sometimes the north west, sometimes the southwest, and other times due-west). They have a tendency to diverge as they approach the city center. Locally, it’s known as the “Tonganoxie Split”†. And while it has notably failed to prevent all dramatic, severe weather in the past, it is definitely something that you notice as you watch the incoming tornadic storms that just rolled in from Nebraska or Wichita.
I don’t think there’s any magic in the hills in-and-around Tonganoxie, Kansas, but I do suspect that the Kansas City metro area has unwittingly altered its own weather patterns by way of being a major pollution bubble in the middle of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.
When watching the storms come in off the plains in the Spring of 2020, I definitely noticed less splitting of the systems; which was particularly worrisome, as at the time I lived nearly due-east of Tonganoxie.
†: Google it
That is interesting! I’d put my money on the splitting being an effect of the urban heat island (and therefore changes in circulation patterns or pressure around Kansas City) rather than pollution. It would make for an interesting case study - I’m wondering whether more people staying at home would have changed the characteristics of the heat island much. It could have decreased the intensity in the centre if you have a big commercial district with lots of high rises there.
If I was still in academia I’d pitch it to my PI 
I found some newsreel footage concerning the flood that devastated the town I live in in 1949, six weeks after my parents moved here, and the day after their furniture was delivered. It includes footage shot from a low-flying plane.
That is… a lot of water! (and a very distracting accent)
Ahh, interesting!
Yes, it is. Does anyone know why voice-over narrators and newsreaders in that era spoke like that?
A combination, I think, of Received Pronunciation and a wish to sound exciting.
(It takes a lot to shake a Catalina around like that.)
Has some interesting discussion about it.
