NIXA, Mo – Mayflies have been spotted between Springfield and Nixa swarming lamp posts and street lights.
Mandy Urban was driving home from Nixa on Sunday night when she noticed she was driving through some strange debris in the air. Urban looked at the street light on Campbell and Guin Road and saw hundreds of bugs swarming the light.
They were Mayflies.
When the insects enter the final stage of their life cycle it is known as a Hatch. The nymphs molt their skin, mate, and then lay their eggs back into lakes and streams before they die.
Urban sat in her car for 25 minutes to watch the hatch.
“Mesmerizing awe is how I described it to somebody else. It’s just the rare little thing that Mother Nature gave me to sit and look at and it was just really neat,” says Urban.
Other people online described the bugs hitting their car as sounding like rain or hail.
In fact, these swarms can often be so large, they can be tracked on weather radar.