10-19-2025 — Rain? or Bugs?

Howdy all. So, the big rain/wind storm day is upon us. It is 16:31 right now. Outside temperature is 60, down from 70 earlier. When it gets below 60, the 10 day forecast doesn’t show it getting that warm again. I switched from shorts to jeans yesterday. May not be able to wear shorts again outside until May 2026. Anyway, the heaviest rain and strongest winds were to arrive around 2 pm. Not so much here. The weather app says the gusts got to 35, which may have happened, but not for long. And sustained winds were more in the 12-15 mph range. They are forecasting another blow coming in late tonight, into the wee hours. Once again forecasting winds sustained around 25, with gusts to 40.

Could happen for sure. As for rain, my rain gauge (bird bath) says around a quarter inch fell today so far. While that is a lot compared to the last couple of months, it isn’t the inch plus forecasted. There still is some coming into the night. If there is good news with the forecast, there are a few rainy days coming up this next week. Hopefully some nice steady rains without big winds! Not completely. Some days may get those 35 mph+ winds. Oh well.

This morning when I got up, the security cameras, overnight, recorded lots of swarming midges. However, when I got up, the windows and other vertical surfaces outside, showed a much smaller number than prior days. Where did they go?

They were on the ground. Millions of dead ones around the entrances to the house. I used a leaf blower again to send a good couple of inches deep of bugs into the yard. But the live ones were also on the ground, or as can be seen in the movie above, in the mulch. The whole bed of mulch seemed to be alive and wiggling. Scary and sickening.

During the day, many moved back to the windows, or swarmed about. I wished it had rained more, because they don’t seem to be able to fly through it.

If the buggies finally drown, maybe the birds and other creatures will return to the yard. Have barely seen a bird or even a squirrel in days.

I did find that the peppermint oil type of human/pet safe insecticide drops the midges to the ground dead on contact. But, the oily residue is slippery and will collect dirt. I had to do something with the thousands in the garage that wanted to get into the house. That seemed like a good answer. Not so sure now.

So no outside for me. Instead I did a few more 3D printer projects. One is finishing right now. It failed yesterday because the new roll of filament I was using must have been “wet”. That forced me to set up the drying capabilities of the new AMS units I bought earlier this year. Running them for 12 hours at 50C, I was able to reduce the humidity in the AMS units, with 4 rolls of PETG filament each, from 35-40 percent to 14-16 percent. That’s nice and dry. So when I restarted the print at 3:30 am this morning, for the 14 hour run, it used that new filament and there was zero stringing, and no spaghetti mess.

And they just finished. Time for me to go upstairs and claim my prize for doing things right. And Enjoy Life.