The state department of health said the wet and rainy summer is keeping mosquito colonies down, but Missourians should still be concerned about the carriers of the West Nile virus.

Normally there would be lots of ditches with stagnant water, prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes, but this year storms are constantly washing out those ditches and mosquito larva can’t survive in the moving water.

Department coordinator, Karen Yates, said soon counties that flooded will likely see an increase in the mosquito population.

"Over the coming weeks as the organic matter in these ditches start to degrade and break down and algae is building up and so on those places can become good breeding sites for mosquitoes," she said.

No matter where you live in the state you should be wary of standing water that could breed mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus, Yates said.

"It’s very unpredictable," she said. "It can show up in any part of the state. There’s really very little that we can do to predict it."

According to the department’s website  in 2007, mosquitoes infected 77 people with the West Nile virus, five of them died.

Yates said so far this year they’ve only seen the virus in St. Louis County.

download or listen to Aurora Meyer’s story here.