Joni Called the Mayfly Invasion

Iowa has been getting little extra attention this week thanks to a viral video of a swarm of mayflies so thick that they shut down a bridge. The video comes from Sabula, Iowa, a little town about sixty miles up the river from the Quad Cities. In the video, you can see a police officer asking for back up when the swarm got so bad he couldn't see out the windshield of his squad car. The whole country has been talking about it ever since with reports from our local WQAD to NBC News, CNN, NY Daily News, and more.

But while the rest of the country might be shocked by these bugs, mayflies aren't exactly a new phenomenon to anyone who lives along the Mississippi. Dubuque sees almost yearly invasions, and we get our fair share here in the Quad Cities. Joni got caught in a swarm so thick that she had to run for cover just last week. She wrote all about it in an article you can read here. So while the mayflies might seem like the stuff of nightmares to some, it's just another part of summer on the river for others.