GOODLAND, Kan. (KSNW) — Like it or not, spiders serve an important purpose in the world.
The creepy crawlers are prolific predators, eating an estimated 400-800 million tons of pests globally yearly. However beneficial they may be to humans, they can still be a nuisance, especially their webs.
You have likely seen photos of trees in Pakistan covered in spiderwebs following flooding or fields in Australia covered in webs. Wichita residents have also recently dealt with spiderwebs covering everything from trees to cars.
It’s a process called ballooning or kiting. Aside from being a minor annoyance for people, it can create problems for meteorologists gathering data.
The National Weather Service Office in Goodland posted on social media Thursday how haze was affecting visibility. An Automated Weather Observation Site at the McCook Municipal Airport in Nebraska indicated this.
That wasn’t the case. It was spiderwebs interfering with the automated visibility readings.
The Goodland office says it is common in late summer and early fall and shared a photo of a visibility sensor in Goodland covered in spider webs.
Remember… observational data and environmental context go hand-in-hand. In other words, in the absence of contextual information… a single piece of observational data is of little/limited use.”
National Weather Service
Goodland
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