# @clevelandmagazine on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/C-7fSFUiEv8
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/22478901-clevelandmagazine-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/9cc84dbe53.jpg
- **Posted:** 2024-08-21T11:00:28.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Cleveland Magazine (@clevelandmagazine) — https://gondola.cc/clevelandmagazine

## Caption

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. False alarm: It’s a swarm of mayflies and midges.

☁️ As the air grows cooler and damper during Northeast Ohio summers, these two critters leave their homes in the bottom of Lake Erie to live outside the water for a few days. When enough of the insects swarm, they appear on weather radars in Northeast Ohio, says National Weather Service Cleveland meteorologist Rick Garuckas.

“A radar sends out a pulse of energy that looks for any particles or objects in the atmosphere, whether that be raindrops, hailstones, snowflakes — or could be other objects, such as insects or any sort of debris in the air,” he says. “Insects are small; the radar is not gonna be able to detect individual insects. But if there's a big cloud of them, like a swarm of mayflies or midges, that's dense enough where the radar is going to reflect it back, and we'll see a light green or blue return.”

🔗 Read more about these insects at the link in bio — and stay tuned for more animal stories during our Critter Week series!

🖊 Julia Soeder
📸 Courtesy SR Photies via Flickr

#mayflies #lakeerie #cleveland nws nwscle

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## Tags

lakeerie, mayflies, cleveland

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