Wet Weather Brings Disease, Fire, Bee Threats

By John Yewell, 4-11-05

Not all of the West has been as wet as Utah -- in Montana, Idaho and parts of Wyoming they’re still talking about the seven-year drought that won’t die. Meanwhile, some Utah ski resorts have received as much as 50 feet of snow, and state hydrologists are gleefully wringing their hands over the imminent spring runoff.

Now for the bad news.

A story in today’s New York Times reveals that the extra precip is threatening parts of the West with an increased risk of West Nile virus (thanks to moisture-loving mosquitoes), swarms of Africanized bees, and wild fires -- this latter in the fall, after the new vegetation dries out. Talk about killjoys.

The story did not specifically mention Utah -- California, Arizona and New Mexico came under the Times lens -- but the same conditions exist here, so let’s assume we’re in for the same problems. And there are a couple of itsy-bitsy other problems the Times overlooked: hantavirus and plague.

Your ever-vigilant editor went looking for context, and found a Deseret Morning News story from March 23 describing how the weather will likely increase the desert rodent population. According to the story, Terry Yates, a University of New Mexico biologist, says the last time we saw weather like this, in 1993, there were 10 hantavirus deaths in New Mexico alone. [End of article]