A 50-mile-wide swarm of flying ants over England was so massive it was mistaken for rain clouds

• Every summer in the UK, a flying ant swarming event known as "flying ant day" occurs.
• On Friday, the Met Office tweeted a swarm was flying over southeast England that was so big its radar systems mistook it for rain.
• It is not the first time flying ants have tricked radar into thinking it's raining.

A gigantic swarms of flying ants over the UK are so massive they can be seen from outer space.

The UK weather service, the Met Office, on Friday tweeted that its radar was picking up what it thought were rain clouds - up to 50-miles-wide -across London and southeast England.

"The radar is actually picking up a swarm of #flyingants across the southeast," the Met Office tweeted.

—Met Office (@metoffice) July 17, 2020

A Met Office spokesman told Sky News there were "thousands" of ants in the swarm. "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," he added.

Flying Ant Day, also known as the "nuptial flight," occurs when the virgin queens leave the colony to mate with the males - who die shortly afterward. It is a swarming event every summer in the UK, usually in July or August. It's a slight misnomer, as all the ants in the country don't actually sprout wings on just one day, but over several weeks.

The Met Office noted that the ants tend to emerge on warm, humid, windless days. This isn't the first time radar has mistaken the clouds of winged ants for rainclouds, last year the Met Office issued a similar tweet.