Helen FieldsScience Writer

We’ve been having the most fascinating weather in the D.C. area this summer. In the spring and early June it rained all the time. The rain stopped just in time for the Folklife Festival, a two-week outdoor Smithsonian event that is always miserably hot and humid. Then something strange happened: It didn’t get hot and humid. It’s just been lovely – in the 70s and 80s with low humidity for weeks now. It gets down into the 60s at night. The fourth of July is supposed to be oppressively muggy, and it was a perfectly pleasant day.

Well, it turns out all that rain earlier in the summer was good for someone: fireflies. There’s a nice article by David Fahrenthold in today’s Washington Post about the local firefly glut. With lots of science! And amusing quotes like this from scientists:

“Some males are better than other males,” Copeland said. “And they advertise something in their flashes that says ‘My name is Joe, and I’ve got . . .’ ” Here, Copeland described part of the male body in a way rarely seen in scientific journals.

I have noticed more fireflies than usual this year – in fact, I even saw some one night in the parking lot of my apartment building, a non-firefly-friendly patch of asphalt wedged between the train lines and some kind of construction company. So, yay for rain!

Art copyright: 2009, FCIT