What's going on with the flying, 80-mile-wide beetle swarm?

A sprawling crowd of lady beetles buzzed over Southern California this week, making a striking appearance on National Weather Service radar.  

The event, which transpired at night on June 4, shows a cloud of lady beetles, colloquially called "ladybugs," flying south over the high desert. The millions upon millions of flying creatures occupied an area some 80 miles by 80 miles of sky, in varying degrees of concentration. 

"The size of that is bewildering," said Tim Kring, who heads the department of entomology at Virginia Tech University and has researched lady beetles for decades.

"It's certainly within the realm of possibility considering the time of year, where it is, and what they're doing," he said. Read more...

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from Mashable http://bit.ly/2WonaWO