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An 80-mile-wide mass of ladybugs has been detected flying over Southern California, according to the San Diego office of the National Weather Service, which tweeted radar footage showing a green “bloom” of insects.
Meteorologist with NWS Joe Dandrea told the Los Angeles Times that even though the ladybug cloud is huge, it is not a concentrated mass; they are rather spread throughout the sky, flying at between 5,000 and 9,000 feet.
“I don’t think they’re dense like a cloud. The observer there said you could see little specks flying by”, Dandrea said.
Even though it appears to be the usual time of year for these beetles to migrate to higher elevations in search of food, the news has caused quite a stir on social media, with many suggesting – whether jokingly or not – that the “ladybug plague” is a harbinger of the Biblical doomsday:
Unlike the locust plague, however, this polka-dot-invasion might become the “cutest apocalypse ever”: