80km-wide swarm of flying ants picked up on radar in the south of England, the Met Office reveals

Swarms of frisky flying ants showed up as 'rain' on radar across the south east of England. Photo / Met Office

So many ants are flying across England that they are being picked up on radar, the Met Office had revealed.

Meteorologists were baffled when sensors in the South East picked up what seemed to be rain, but people in London, Kent and Sussex were enjoying a dry and cloudless day.

Examining the shape of the 'droplets', which were picked up by radar, they found that they appeared to be insect-shaped.

They then investigated on social media, to see if anyone in the local area was posting about an insect swam, and found that hundreds of people were complaining about hordes of flying ants.

In mid-July, ants grow wings and fly high in the air, swarming together in the sky to mate. This causes a nuisance for those trying to enjoy a fine day outside, as they are prone to gathering in the sky and landing in drinks and on books and surfaces. They are often spotted by sunbathers as they prefer to mute in hot, dry and humid weather. This annual phenomenon is referred to as 'flying ant day'.

It's not raining in London, Kent or Sussex, but our radar says otherwise...📡

The radar is actually picking up a swarm of #flyingants across the southeast 🐜

During the summer ants can take to the skies in a mass emergence usually on warm, humid and windless days #flyingantday pic.twitter.com/aMF6RxR943

— Met Office (@metoffice) July 17, 2020

While many complained this year, BBC presenter Chris Packham rebuked those who besmirched the insects. He reminded his followers they are "harmless" and "ecologically important". The ants provide an important food source for birds in the summer, and sometimes colonies of as many as 15,000 can be in the air at the same time.

This year's swarms of ants appear to have come thick and fast, as the Met Office have had small 'rain' alerts in dry parts of the country all week, and then a major alert in the South East on Friday.

A spokesperson for the Met Office told The Telegraph: "It's an annual event where they come out of the ground and fly into the air at the middle of July, it's when they do their mating.

"When our radar is detecting rain we send a beam down, it hits the droplet and sends the beam back. When it was sending the signal this morning our rain gauges were dry, there were no clouds in the sky, it was sunny. So it was hitting something else in the sky and sending a signal back."

He explained that they had to trawl Twitter to find an answer, adding :"We looked into what it was, looked into reports on social media where people were reporting flying ants and sending pictures and videos.

"We can also look at the shape of the object in the sky and they were coming back as not raindrop shapes, they were longer and more insect shaped.

"We could say that they were insects but couldn't say they were flying ants until we saw the information on social media."

This phenomenon has happened in previous years, and sometimes the swarms become so significant they can be seen from space.