On Tuesday evening , around 9.30pm , the US National Weather Service ( NWS ) in San Diego County picked up an unusual signal on its radar . At first glimpse , it see like a raincloud or storm system . But nope , it was a swarm of bugs . Ladybugs , listen you , so not so bad , but still a cloud of bugs .

The corporate noun for a group of ladybugs is a “ bloom , ” accord to NWS San Diego who partake in the video on Twitter ( although a"loveliness"is also listed ) .

“ The large reverberation showing up on SoCal radar this evening is not precipitation , but really a cloud of ladybird beetle term a ‘ flush , ’ ” they say .

At first , the meteorologists at NSW ’s San Diego office were n’t certain what they were seeing .

“ We were trying to project it out ourselves , ” Mark Moede told theWashington Post . “ It looked like echo reflecting off raindrops , but we were n’t check any clouds . ”

According to Joe Dandrea , another meteorologist who was on shift that night , the bug formation look to be about 130 kilometers by 130 kilometers ( 80 miles by 80 statute mile ) , flying at between 1,525 and 2,745 meters ( 5,000 and 9,000 feet ) . utter to theLA Times , he channelise out the swarm was n’t one Brobdingnagian dense volume , but rather disseminate out , though he did say the most saturated mass was about 16 kilometers ( 10 miles ) widely .

When Dandrea see the signal kill up on the radiolocation , he explained they called a spotter ( volunteers at the NWS’sSKYWARNstorm spotter programme ) in the neighborhood of the good deal , near Wrightwood in the San Bernardino Mountains , to support what they were see .

“ I do n’t retrieve they ’re dumb like a cloud , ” Dandrea tell theLA Times . “ The observer there said you could see little specks flying by . ”

However , the next day they had completely go away .

So , what was happening and where did they go ?

Ladybugs , or ladybirds as they are also experience , are pretty vulgar across the world . It ’s unclear which mintage of ladybug get the microwave radar signal as there are around 5,000 species of ladybug worldwide , and over 100 ground in California alone .

Many of these coinage expend the winter in the Sierra Nevada mass and then fly to the warmer coasts and valley in outflow to eat aphid , partner , and lay eggs . They likely moved on to somewhere even warmer , such as Mexico .

Moede did point out in his consultation with the Washington Post that the cloud was so large “ it does raise the question of whether it could be something else . ” He suggested“chaff ” , mo of aluminum release by the war machine to discombobulate radar signals that may be track airplanes , as a potential alternative explanation .

However , it ’s not the first time a swarm of bugs   – or other beasties , for that matter – has been picked up by radio detection and ranging . In July 2014 , an epicmayfly hatchingevent in Wisconsin was pick up by NWS La Crosse . And as you could see in the telecasting below , in July 2015 , NWS Norman blame up drove of grasshoppers and beetle in Oklahoma . In 2016 , NWS Memphis get alarge flock of goofball , and in 2018 NWS Austin / San Antonio get aswarm of batsemerging for the night .

So a swarm of ladybug is not so spoilt . It could have been much bad , after all .