(FORTUNE Magazine) – Termites are back. They emerge from their nests in late winter and early spring, when thaws encourage them to swarm. Thousands of creatures that look like ants with wings can fly through a house for several hours seeking new places to colonize. Left behind will be up to a million worker termites that can chew up your staircase and digest the floor joists as they cart the digested wood to the queen. She, meanwhile, will be busy creating new offspring. Given the love termites have for heat and humidity, it's no surprise that Miami is America's most infested city. The arrival of a supertermite could make the situation worse. Some Southern states -- including Florida, Texas, and Louisiana -- are battling the formosan, a rarer, hardier termite that apparently reached U.S. shores on cargo ships from the Far East in the late 1970s. In Galveston, Texas, New Orleans, and other cities, experts have discovered formosan colonies of six million termites -- six times regulation size. If all this is too terrifying, there is one answer: Move to Alaska, the only state in the union with no termites. - R.T.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: MARIA KEEHAN FOR FORTUNE/SOURCE: ORKIN CAPTION: CITIES WHERE TERMITES EAT THE MOST