At first, meteorologists at the National Weather Service didn’t know what to make of the ominous blob their radar picked up over Southern California on Tuesday.

Was it an enormous storm cloud that appeared from out of nowhere?

A massive unidentified flying object threatening the West Coast?

After failing to make a determination, NWS officials reached out to associates in the area — who identified the mysterious cloud as a swarm of ladybugs. A huge swarm.

The agency’s Alex Tardy says while it’s unusual for a swarm to be large enough to show up on radar, it’s not out of the ordinary for ladybugs to group over California this time of year.

“Ladybugs are known in Central and Southern California to migrate and move in masses,” he says. “You know — like in hundreds of thousands.”