A bug swam over Copper Breaks State Park wasn't as big as Texas, but it was big enough to show up on National Weather Service radar Wednesday as grasshoppers and beetles buzzed the northern part of the state at 2,500 feet.
Jonathan Kurtz of the National Weather Service posted a YouTube video of the phenomena picked up on the agency's radar out of Norman, Oklahoma, reported
the Washington Post. The radar showed the swarm, which could have been mistaken for light rain, which stretched from northern Texas to southwestern Oklahoma Wednesday.
"What looks like to be an area of light rain over North Texas is actually biological returns on radar, or more specifically, grasshoppers and beetles, as confirmed by the rangers in Copper Breaks State Park," said Kurtz. "Now, if you were down there, you wouldn't see a swarm of bugs in the air, but there's just enough flying around to be sampled by the radar."
David Turner, a park ranger at Copper Breaks State Park in Quanah, told
CNN that grasshoppers and beetles are commonplace in the area.
"We have grasshoppers and beetles around here but not anything more than usual," said Turner.
Kurtz agreed, saying the bugs were flying at different elevations and not in a massive swarm.
"It doesn't take a whole lot of bugs to cause that on radar," Kurtz told CNN. "It's not like biblical proportions. There was just enough out there that the radar picked it up."
There was also an insect swarm last weekend around Sabula, Iowa, when mayflies forced authorities to shut down the Savanna-Sabula Bridge,
according to WQAD-TV.
Police noted that two motorcycles lost traction as they tried to move through piles of mayflies which had taken over the bridge.
"Biggest thing I noticed was after cars were stopped and sitting for so long while we're trying to get cars moving again is they were probably piled knee high in front of their headlights from just sitting there," said Sabula Police Department Reserve Officer Stephen Thayer.
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