By Edgar Kelley, The Inter-Mountain
ELKINS, W.Va. — Bad weather conditions wasn’t the only thing Hurricane Ida blew into the Mountain State back during the first week of September.
Several area residents, especially those in Barbour County, suffered an attack from an army. Not an army of human soldiers, but of armyworm moths who hitched a ride from Ida and bombed many local lawns with their eggs.
“We didn’t get any reports of any damage in Randolph County, but we had some down in Barbour County and they definitely had some in the Greenbrier Valley and over in the panhandle as well,” Jody Carpenter, Agriculture and Natural Resource Agent for the WVU Randolph County Extension Service, told The Inter-Mountain. “Over in Greenbrier and Monroe County they had some damage with some lawns and in some pastures with hay crops, and in Barbour they had a little bit of that too.”
Each June, armyworm moths journey from the south and make a brief appearance in the Mountain State. While here they lay eggs that produce striped caterpillars and the larvae of an ordinary, benign brown moth…
To read more: https://www.theintermountain.com/news/local-news/2021/10/hurricane-ida-blew-destructive-armyworms-into-local-area/
