How bad will the mosquitoes be this summer? City of Powell Sanitation Superintendent Allen Griffin isn’t offering any predictions.

While some try guessing based on the relative wetness or dryness of the spring, Griffin says it’s a crapshoot from year-to-year.

“You can have very similar weather patterns and one be bad [for mosquitoes] and one not,” he said.

What Griffin can promise, however, is that the city will do its best to keep the pesky, disease-bearing insects under control. 

Thanks in part to a $11,200 grant from the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, sanitation personnel are again deploying larvacide in the city’s storm drains to kill mosquitoes before they can take flight — and they’ll spray pesticides later this summer when the swarms inevitably get thicker.

Sprayings are scheduled whenever the city’s mosquito trap begins to fill up with the insects; just like a person or animal, the propane-powered device attracts bugs by putting out carbon dioxide, but then pulls them into a small netted trap where they can be counted.

(Griffin and his crews also make the rounds when city hall starts fielding complaints about the number of mosquitoes.)

The sanitation department uses two trucks and sprayers to fog the town with Clarke’s BioMist 3+15. They start around dusk and cover the whole city in about three-and-a-half hours.

The mosquitoes got off to a slow start last year — “We went through July 4 with nothing,” Griffin recalled — but then made up for lost time: Between July 10 and Aug. 18, city crews sprayed on seven different nights. That was above the average of about five nights of summer spraying, Griffin said.

Citizens who don’t want their property to be sprayed with BioMist can contact city hall at 307-754-5106.

Residents can also join the fight against skeeters by draining water from items like buckets or tarps. Even small quantities of standing or slow-moving water can be a breeding ground for big batches of culex and other disease-carrying vector mosquitoes. Those species’ bites can spread potentially serious illnesses like West Nile virus. That’s why the Wyoming Department of Health encourages residents to wear insect repellent and protective clothing and to avoid going out at dawn and dusk (when mosquitoes are the most active).

Although the city didn’t start its fogging until July last year, the effort typically begins in June; Griffin said the mosquito trap will be deployed this week.

To see which nights the city is spraying, track the City of Powell’s Facebook or X accounts, or check cityofpowell.com after 4 p.m. each day.