First, the bad news: an early spike in the number of cases of West Nile virus infection reported this year has some researchers predicting a possible epidemic as the end of summer approaches.

But don't board up your windows or stock up on bottled water just yet. Infectious disease specialists say such an epidemic would not be as deadly as those involving other viruses -- and would be largely preventable, to boot.

"What we're seeing is the expected increase in West Nile virus transmission that occurs during the summer months," said Dr. Ned Hayes, a medical epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But he added that this year, early figures appear high.

According to July 24 data, the CDC has fielded a total of 122 reports of human West Nile Virus infection in 17 states so far this year. Three people have died.

Have you found a better way to kill mosquitoes, we are always looking for ideas to share with other people, share your ideas and we will share them with all of our visitors.

With a 50 percent chance of rain today, the region remains on course to continue overcoming this summer's drought, a National Weather Service-Lake Charles meteorologist said.

Temperatures are forecast to be in the mid 50s and skies are expected to remain cloudy.

It's a "dreary" kind of weather reminiscent of a northeastern snow storm sans snow, Meteorologist Kent Kuyper said.

Rainfall for the month is down half an inch but up 4 inches for the last six months.

"It is typical Southeast Texas-Southwest Louisiana weather," the chipper meteorologist said. "The good news is we are not in a drought. It might be good for crawfish. When there is a drought in the winter time crawfish prices go up."

So there it is something to look forward to in a few months.

But as for tomorrow, expect 1-to-3 inches of rain.

"People who build stuff don't particularly like," Kuyper said.

When dealing with West Nile virus, prevention is your best bet. Fighting mosquito bites reduces your risk of getting this disease, along with others that mosquitoes can carry. Take the commonsense steps below to reduce your risk:

• avoid bites and illness;
  
  
• clean out the mosquitoes from the places where you work and play;
  
  
• help your community control the disease.
  
  

Something to remember: The chance that any one person is going to become ill from a single mosquito bite remains low. The risk of severe illness and death is highest for people over 50 years old, although people of all ages can become ill.

The mosquitoes seem to be just as bad in the winter as they were during the summer here in Southeast Texas, how bad are they around the rest of the county??

They're as aggressive as they are big.

Bloodthirsty mosquitoes continue to swarm and dart in areas of Southeast Texas despite the season change.

The Jefferson County Mosquito Control has had an unusually busy winter start, thanks in part to recent storms that have kept already over saturated marshes wet.

"We're dealing with a byproduct of Hurricane Ike," Pilot Jeff Douthitt, who has worked 22 years with the Jefferson County Mosquito Control District, said. "When I'm flying, I can see a whole lot of water on the ground."

Douthitt said mosquito control takes every opportunity possible to spray. However, their efforts have been hampered by recent weather - fog, wind and cold temperatures.

When it's foggy the pilots can't see to fly. If it's too windy, they can't spray because of chemical guidelines.

And if it's too cold, the mosquitoes aren't out, rendering the chemicals ineffective.

"It's unusual for us to be flying this time of year, but the mosquitoes are bad," field foreman Kevin Sexton said before he and Douthitt took off on a flight just before dusk Wednesday.

Sexton said he was called in from vacation for spray duty.

The mosquitoes most prevalent now are the salt marsh and rice field species.

The rice field mosquito breeds in flooded fields and can travel up to 40 miles; the salt marsh mosquito can fly up to 60 miles, according to Enterprise archives.

Earlier this year, rain from Tropical Storm Edouard created just the right conditions to awaken dormant eggs in low lying areas, according to Enterprise archives.

Then along came Ike, the second of the one-two punch for the region.

Southeast Texas saw a similar rise in mosquito activity after Hurricane Rita.

This summer, mosquito activity was fairly light compared with previous years. This year is also a record breaker of sorts. For the entire month of July, the mosquito control had no reports of any West Nile-carrying mosquitoes, which last occurred in 2004, according to Enterprise archives.

The previous two years West Nile-infected mosquitoes were found as early as June, according to Enterprise archives.

SUFFOLK COUNTY's new long-term plan for mosquito control and wetlands management was supposed to be a breakthrough that would reduce the use of pesticides by 75 percent over 10 years.

But as the Long Island mosquito season begins, the plan, which includes continued use of a larvicide called methoprene, is running into opposition. The board of supervisors of the Town of East Hampton, for example, passed a resolution last month telling Suffolk it opposes further use of methoprene, which inhibits insect growth, in its saltwater wetlands. It prefers the bacterial agent Bti.

Suffolk County began spraying methoprene in salt marshes on Tuesday in several locations around Great South Bay and at a county park on Moriches Bay, said Walter Dawydiak, chief engineer for the health department's Division of Environmental Quality and project manager for the long-term plan. No methoprene had been applied in East Hampton salt marshes, Mr. Dawydiak said, because none was yet needed.

The county says that mosquito efforts are a public health issue, saying mosquito control is essential to holding down human cases of West Nile virus. Under state regulations, the county has the power to override the town in such a case.

The county's Vector Control Division, a part of the Health Department and the agency responsible for mosquito control, has been applying methoprene in East Hampton's Accabonac and Napeague Harbor wetlands since about 1995, said Lawrence T. Penny, the town's director of natural resources. But concerns have grown about the risks of methoprene to crabs, shrimp, lobster and other organisms, including other insects, and the town says too little is known about it.

"Our salt marsh dragonfly population has crashed, and we don't know why," Mr. Penny said. Though there is no evidence that the use of methoprene was responsible, he said, the decline coincides with the use of the larvicide.

"It's very troubling," he said.

East Hampton is not alone in its concerns. The State Department of Environmental Conservation, which manages about 2,320 of the 17,000 acres of saltwater wetlands in Suffolk, is setting a high standard for methoprene use on those lands. A temporary permit the state issued to Suffolk for the state-managed wetlands in April allows methoprene "only when a threat to human health exists, but not for routine mosquito-control purposes," the department said in a statement. A criterion is whether West Nile virus or the far more rare Eastern equine encephalitis is found in mosquitoes trapped in the state-managed wetlands.

Nassau County, which has a less extensive mosquito control program and less acreage to cover than Suffolk, also uses methoprene as a backup for Bti, when Bti is not enough.

For 2006, New York reported two human cases of West Nile virus in Suffolk County and five in Nassau to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta; none were fatal. No cases of Eastern equine encephalitis were reported on the Island.

Suffolk's health department said 57 mosquito samples tested positive for West Nile last year.

Suffolk health officials said methoprene protects the public from mosquito-borne diseases, principally West Nile virus, and limits the need for adult pesticide spraying later on.

"We have the duty to protect the public health," said Mr. Dawydiak of the county health department.

Scott R. Campbell, the chief of the county's Arthropod-Borne Disease Laboratory, said the methoprene dosages the county applied were so small that only the specific mosquito larvae were affected. He said he had seen no study showing that methoprene was harmful in such amounts.

Other agencies take a more conservative view. The Fire Island National Seashore follows a policy for methoprene similar to the state's. "We avoid it as much as we can and only want it used when there is an actual disease threat present," said Michael T. Reynolds, the superintendent.

Methoprene prevents mosquito larvae from maturing into adults while remaining as food for mosquito predators.

In March, the Suffolk County Legislature approved the new long-term plan despite recommendations from its own Council on Environmental Quality that methoprene use be restricted in saltwater wetlands. The legislators for Suffolk's five East End towns and parts of Brookhaven, the Republicans Edward P. Romaine of Center Moriches and Jay Schneiderman of Montauk, voted against the plan. The council also called for a clearer distinction between pesticide use for disease control and for nuisance control.

Mr. Dawydiak, the plan's project manager, said modeling by the county showed that without methoprene, mosquitoes would increase fivefold, pesticide use on adult mosquitoes would double and death and illness from West Nile virus would soar.

Kevin McAllister, the president of Peconic Baykeeper, a nonprofit conservation group in Quogue that has opposed county policies on mosquito control and wetlands management, said, "Obviously it's in their interest to cloak themselves in the public health issue." He added, "It's alarmist behavior to instill fear."

Mr. Penny, East Hampton's director of natural resources, said the town had no human cases of West Nile virus, no history of mosquito-related health problems and few complaints about mosquitoes.

Mr. Dawydiak concedes that West Nile virus is "not commonly found" in salt marsh mosquitoes.