General situation  We're a little later than normal kicking off this season's projections for thrips. As far as temperatures are concerned, the data suggest that eastern San Joaquin county maybe isn't as far behind normal as we might think.  That said, the heavy rains have slowed things down so we're not in too bad a position when it comes to reporting. We can expect a slow start for thrips, and soil-borne pupae populations have probably taken a hit with soils being saturated for a long period.  Field access might be an issue in some areas because of water-logging, delaying planting.  The current projections for the season, based on ocean surface temperatures, are for a very hot summer so we might ramp up very fast once the wet season storms finally come to an end.  Growers in northern counties should remember that there are now Resistance Breaking (RB) strains in the region, so resistant varieties might not stand up to TSWV without protection.  As always, we'll be focusing our attention on suppressing the 3rd or 4th generation of thrips depending on whether we see TSWV early.

Thrips population development  Taking our usual January 1 start date, the temperatures since the turn of the year are projected to cause generation 1 adults to peak in the next 3-4 days.  Assuming things start warming up soon, we're predicting generation 2 adults will peak around May 19th.  We don't want to make projections any further ahead than that until we see if the weather is going to settle into its summer pattern.