Why this tick season may be bad -- and how to protect yourself

It's the peak season for tick nymphs across parts of the U.S., and experts are warning that this could be a bountiful year for the minuscule, disease-carrying bugs.

It's the peak season for tick nymphs across many parts of the United States, and experts are warning that this could be a particularly bountiful year for the minuscule, potentially disease-carrying bugs. Each spring and summer, Jean Tsao dons a white tick suit and goes out into fields throughout Michigan to study the prevalence of the black-legged tick, which transmits Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that approximately 476,000 Americans are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year. Along with her team, Tsao, an associate professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Michigan State University, will drag a white cloth along thousands of meters to see how many ticks they collect. So far this season, they have already collected more ticks than they did all of last summer, when they dragged until mid-July and covered a greater distance. "A colleague in Connecticut said their nymphal numbers were up by 85% right now," Tsao told ABC News. "I think the trend is overall numbers are higher, but it's not seen everywhere."