Grasshoppers in "live snow" cover Las Vegas and can be seen by radar.

On July 26th, a few blocks away from Las Vegas Avenue, grasshoppers besieged street lamps. Bridget Bennett/AFP/Getty)

Here are five words you absolutely don't want to hear: "It's not snowing. It's a grasshopper.

But in the past few days, it was a nightmare scene in Las Vegas. The city's bustling, casino-lined boulevards are even more lively than usual. Literally, there are locusts everywhere. They are flying around on the sidewalk and tumbling around under the light.

The pale-winged grasshopper (Trimerotropis pallidipennis) is a common desert species in the southwestern United States. After a rainy winter and spring season provided a rich vegetation feast for these insects, many grasshoppers originating in southern Nevada are migrating and moving north. Jeff Knight, an entomologist with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), told reporters on July 25th that their path will take them to Las Vegas and possibly extend to central Nevada. Knight said, [Top 1: the biggest pests in nature]

Similar grasshopper migrations used to be carried out after wet winter or spring; He recalled that in his career of more than 3 years, he had "seen at least four or five times" such incidents in the region. Once the grasshopper population grows to a certain density, the increase of chemical serotonin secreted by insects may lead to swarm behavior and lead to collective flight of insects.

These creatures fly at night and can cover "at least hundreds of miles". Knight said that during their migration to the north, they will fly as high as 1, feet (35 meters) above sea level. This special bee colony is so dense that it was detected by radar on July 27th, and meteorologists used it to track the weather: at first glance, these huge insect swarms are like storm clouds. According to CNN,

The pale winged grasshopper is brown or gray with obvious black and yellow stripes on its legs, and it can be found in dry habitats from southwest Canada to Argentina. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the size of these insects varies according to where they live. Females are larger than males and can reach 1.3 inches (33 mm) in length. However, although a single grasshopper may be small, the number of them in the bee colony in Las Vegas is disturbing. An eyewitness tweeted a video of a grasshopper tornado spinning by a street lamp outside the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on July 26th. According to the US Department of Agriculture, she tweeted that the dense clouds with wings are like living "snow" of flying insects. In 1988, there were a group of pale winged grasshoppers in Arizona, so many that the insects on the street reached a depth of 2 inches (5 cm). Knight said that there are so many grasshoppers arriving in Las Vegas at present, and it is meaningless to try to get rid of them with pesticides-no matter how many grasshoppers are killed in any one night, there will be thousands when the sun goes down next time. Knight said that many insect intruders will eventually be eaten by birds, coyotes and even other insects.

More importantly, residents have no fear of grasshopper visitors.

"They don't carry any diseases, they don't bite people, and they are not even one of the problem species we think," Knight said.

What if the grasshopper manages to get into a house? "Use a vacuum cleaner," Knight said. There is no point in spraying your house.

As the saying goes, what happened in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. Fortunately, for human residents in the city, these flying insects have not stayed, and grasshoppers should disappear within a few weeks at most. Knight said: Photo Gallery: Amazing photos of grasshoppers: 15 kinds of insects and spiders may Live with you. Seven kinds of insects you will eat in the future

First published on Live.