Drought could mean a bad West Nile year
By Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee
Abbey Murphy never felt the mosquito bite that eventually swelled her brain and left her unable to walk for weeks.
“I had uncontrollable vomiting, severe migraines,” said Murphy, a sophomore at UC Berkeley. “I couldn’t get up to get breakfast.”
Murphy eventually recovered from her West Nile virus infection, though it took months. She was one of roughly 800 Californians infected last year during the worst West Nile outbreak in a decade, new state figures show.
Experts say the ongoing drought was largely to blame and predict another bad year in 2015.