If you live in the Coachella Valley, you already know August can bring sudden storms. One minute it is dry and hot, the next it is pouring rain. And almost every time this happens, homeowners start seeing ants inside their house. It is not a coincidence. It happens for a simple reason.

Ants live underground in colonies. When it rains hard, water floods their tunnels. The ants have nowhere to go, so the whole colony leaves at once looking for someplace dry. Your house is dry, warm, and usually has food lying around somewhere. That makes it the perfect spot for them to move into. This is why ants can go from zero to everywhere overnight right after a storm.

The most common ants we see in the Coachella Valley during this time are odorous house ants and pavement ants. If you have sprinklers or a yard that holds water after rain, you might also see fire ants show up. Each type acts a little differently, but they are all doing the same basic thing. They are running from flooded ground and trying to find a new dry home, which sometimes ends up being yours.

Here is where people usually go wrong. They see a few ants on the counter, grab a spray from the store, and kill the ones they can see. That feels like it works, but it does not actually solve anything. The colony is still alive somewhere else in or around your house. In some cases, spraying can even make things worse. It can scare the colony into splitting up and spreading into more spots instead of staying in one place.

A better first step is figuring out how the ants are getting in. Walk around your windows and doors and look for small gaps. Check anywhere a pipe or wire goes through a wall. Ants can squeeze through spaces so small you would barely notice them, especially when they are desperate to escape flooding outside. Keeping your counters clean and food sealed up also helps, since it gives them less reason to stick around once they are inside.

The real fix is dealing with the colony itself, not just the ants you can see walking across your kitchen. When the nest gets treated directly, the problem actually goes away instead of coming back every time it rains. That is the difference between spraying ants for the rest of the summer and actually being done with them.

If the next storm has you bracing for ants again, get ahead of it now. Call Rudy’s Pest Control at 760-775-7216 and we will find the colony and take care of it for good.