Swarm of Giant Grasshoppers Captured on New Mexico Radar Images (PHOTO)

The National Weather Service posted an image of what is they called a swarm of giant grasshoppers. The masses were detected for four straight nights about 1,000 feet over Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“We actually thought the radar was broken, so we had our technicians go out there a couple times,” Brent Wachter, a forecaster with the weather service in Albuquerque, told KRQE. “They couldn’t find anything wrong.”

Officials at the Albuquerque Environmental Department say last year’s monsoon season coupled with a dry winter led to an influx of grasshoppers, which hatched a few weeks ago and were likely pulled up high into the atmosphere by thermal inversions and southwest winds.

Other than defoliating some garden plants and annoying local meteorologists, the grasshoppers are harmless.