(KLFY) — OFF! Mosquito Repellant, Climate Engine, and Google Cloud have teamed up to create a free seven-day forecast of mosquito activity that users can search by ZIP code.
Users can visit the site for free and can also sign up to have daily forecast emails sent to them.
According to OFF!, the forecast is created based on a number of data sources.
“The model combines three inputs – knowledge of a mosquito’s lifecycle, detailed climate data inputs, and mosquito population counts from over 5,000 locations provided by VectorBase,” states the forecast’s website. “To determine accuracy, our team spent 6 years checking the model’s results against live populations, generating 33 million data points. The results confirm model predictions match the reality on the ground.”
Weather and climate data are also part of the forecast. While temperature and humidity are the chief data points for the forecast, the website also states that its algorithm takes some long-term weather trends into consideration.
“There are also days that are ‘too hot’ when mosquitoes tend to lie low, and days that are ‘too cold’ when mosquitoes are less active – kind of like a goldilocks effect,” stated the website. “So we automatically adjust our algorithm for those days. There also needs to be sufficient humidity for mosquitoes to come to life.”