Yikes! 
Posted on 10/14/2001 8:19:00 AM PDT by Le-Roy
Folks, please excuse the vanity, but I would like to get others to look at this.
If there is anyone in Dallas with a telescope or a good set of binoculars, get outside and point them SE, towards Kaufman Cty.
There are currently thousands (literally) of wispy, white 'streamers' of something drifting down through the sky. This stuff is falling all over my yard, all over Forney, and all the way out to Terrell.
Could this be the same 'harmless' stuff which fell in Trappe, MD. last week? I don't know, but it is truly bizarre.
The flying spider phenomenon is one of thse strange events that's on a weird natural clock. Spider hatchlings over a wide area, from thousands of nests, will all disperse at once.
And their dispersal will be over a still wider area.
This stuff has been reported from north-eastern Dallas all the way to Corpus Christi (swampfx's post at #137). Don't know if these are localized pockets, or generally predominant for that range.
Has anyone heard any further details on the stuff in Trappe, MD, other than it was determined to be 'harmless'?
1) The aircraft would literally have to buzz you....at 100 feet DIRECTLY overhead...to actually hit you with it....or...
2) To hit the Dallas area the stuff would have to be dispensed in New Mexico or Colorado, to actually land in Dallas...and they wouldn't be able to predict whether stuff dropped in New Mexico would land in Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma, etc.
I saw the spiders marching through the air,
Swimming from tree to tree, that mildewed day
In latter August when the hay
Came creaking to the barn. But where
The wind is westerly
Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly
Into the apparitions of the sky,
They purpose nothing but their ease and die
Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea.
and that the substance was being analyzed by the naval airstation to see what it was.
Also, the plane that was seen had reported in and wasn't considered a risk.<P.Reporting from North Fort Worth, I'm Dain Bramage,.. back to you Bob.
"Dr. Jerome Rovner, one of the world's leading arachnologists (authorities on spiders), told Journey North, "Ballooning spiders indeed make up a large component of the aerial plankton. Darwin noted a mass landing of spiders on THE BEAGLE when 200 miles off the coast of South America. About 15 or so years ago, some Californians panicked at the sight of mysterious--and probably alien!--material falling from the sky (the silk threads of a major spider ballooning event)."
"One entomologist, Dr. Gilbert Waldbauer, calculated that during daylight in May, a volume of air 1 mile square extending from 20 feet above the ground to an altitude of 500 feet contained 32 million arthropods! He wrote that "This amounts to 6 arthropods per 10 cubic yards of air. Ten cubic yards is quite a small space, about the size of a small clothes closet."
Same thing as we are seeing here today. Very much like spider web strand, with a clump at one end or the other. I too, think it is naturally occuring, just don't know from what. Grew up around here and don't ever recall seeing it before. I have taken a picture of one of the clumps on the ground, but no longer have server access to post it.
"In Missouri, people tend to notice ballooning spiders most in the spring and fall, though ballooning may take place any time of the year for some species.
How far can spiders expect to travel on their gossamer aircraft? Because spiderlings are so small and difficult to see against a background of white sky, it is impossible to come up with species-by-species accounts and averages. One spiderling may land just a few yards from its take-off point, while its sibling may travel 100 yards. Still other species may go for miles and perish in a lake, or wrap themselves around the neck of an unsuspecting angler.
Charles Darwin observed the arrival of ballooning spiders on board a ship 60 miles from the coast of South America. Arachnologists-people who study spiders-have concluded that most ballooning spiders reach heights of 200 feet or less, though people have seen spiders at 5,000 feet and a few at 10,000."
I'm almost convinced that it is spiders, but I have never seen so much of it at once.
P.S. It is the male cottonwoods that release pollen, the females are the pollen-collectors. There's some pretty interesting web-sites of botanists, horticulturalists, Ph.D. plant people (more alliteration...;^), that point to the predominance of male trees and bushes (many places between 90-95%) in urban areas as being responsible for the exponential increase in allergies and asthma. I think they have a point.
However...this is October, not May. It's still unusual...and somewhat disconcerting in such abundance. Although, after four years of abounding grasshoppers, the spider population was bound to explode. (I actually let one stay by my porch, and she managed four egg sacks before she was gone.)
Uh, the egg sacks are still there, BTW.
Yikes!
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