They love to fill up those alpine lake trenches like a soup bowl. On the hike up to the top of the mountain above lake Margaret, we'd dip down into the drier midlevel winds on the other exposed side of the ridge, and boom, not even a bumblebee. It's like a little humid continental climate in those spots...the still water makes it so humid

There is no worse spot than Lake Takhlakh in August. My god, there's not enough RAID on the planet on a hot day there.

18z Euro really upped rainfall totals for the midweek cutoff, with some well placed midlevel convection and a pivoting stratoform band. Check out norcal!

Post-covid bug boom?

She's totally valid for that... And I can attest to her pain because WA state has some bad spots, as I've had to find out firsthand. About five years back just after Covid, I went camping with some friends up at a little alpine pond called Lake Margaret, up around 4'k ft up above sea level a bit to the north and east of Snoqualimie Pass, right above 1-90. Anyways. This little lake is frozen for much of the year, until midsummer, when the ice thaws and the shores rapidly bloom into a warm, soupy mudbath, hosting just about every flying insect native to Washington state. We were swarmed, nosedived, divebombed, bit, scratched, and stung. We decided to leave a night early. My friends and I hallucinated bugs the whole drive home. And I'm pretty sure I had head fog for a year or two afterward from whatever the crap might have literally plagued me Beautiful hike up to the mountaintop though, if you're willing to pay the yellowjackets their requisite two sting toll for entering their holy domain. You get a really good view of the campsite, behind a thick fog of bugs