A swarm of flying ants sweeping the UK today was so big it was mistaken for rain when it was picked up on the weather radar.

The Met Office’s radar imagery picked up the cloud of ants, around 50 miles wide, over Kent and Sussex. Smaller swarms could be seen over London.

The critters were picked up as a spell of rain, with the Met Office later confessing: “It’s not raining in London, Kent or Sussex, but our radar says otherwise.”

“The radar is actually picking up a swarm of flying ants across the southeast. “During the summer ants can take to the skies in a mass emergence usually on warm, humid and windless days flying ant day.”

The Met Office then clarified that the ants “showed up as interference on our radar imagery” from its land-based system.

The swarm also caught the attention of BBC weather presenter Simon King who tweeted an image as what he described as an “incredible” phenomenon.

He posted: “Flying ants!!! Swarms of them flying into the sky in S Eng are being picked up as rain on the radar image this morning.”

He told the BBC : “We knew it was dry in the south of England, and yet the radar was showing this very light precipitation across the south.

“You can tell it’s not rainfall because it has that eerie look to it. It doesn’t quite match what rainfall looks like. “For it to actually to appear on the radar imagery, that’s something certainly incredible.”

A spokesman for the weather service said there are likely “thousands” of ants within the swarm. He said: “It’s not unusual for larger swarms to be picked up.

“A similar thing happened almost exactly a year ago on flying ant day.

“On days like today, when it is sunny, the radar detects the swam but we are able to see they are not the same shape as water droplets, and in fact look more insect-like.”

Flying ant day occurs when males and new queens leave the nest to mate, with many ant colonies doing so on the same day.

According to the Royal Society of Biology, there is not always one flying ant day, but as many as 96 per cent of days betweenJune and September flying ants are spotted.

Last Sunday huge numbers of flying ants were spotted across the country with Brits taking to social media to report sightings.

The types of flying ants we see in the UK are mostly likely to be Lasius Niger ants or simply black garden ants.

Their nest consist of just one singular queen, and around 5,000 workers. Sometimes, this number can reach 15,000.

Source:- Mirror Uk