Greene County is an epicenter for Lyme risk, data shows
Published on:
July 17, 2026
Tiny black-legged ticks, commonly known as deer ticks, can carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Photo contributed.
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GREENE COUNTY―In Greene County, the chance of being bitten by a tick infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme disease is among the highest in the state. Greene County ranks ninth out of New York’s 62 counties and 35th out of 1,268 counties in the eastern part of the country.
The data comes from a TickZone, a free daily tick-risk forecast site and app covering more than 26,000 towns across 38 states.
“Ticks have been expanding their range and numbers for years and this year really drove it home,” said TickZone founder Nathan Burnett.
“But there wasn't a straightforward way for a regular person to know how bad it was where they actually live,” he added.
Burnett, who lives in Massachusetts, knows what it is like to live in a “tick zone.” The Northeast is a hub for tick populations and tick-borne diseases. In fact, Lyme got its name from Old Lyme, Connecticut, where doctors first observed a cluster of unusual inflammatory arthritis cases among children in 1975.
Since then, the number of ticks and reported cases of illnesses continue to grow. In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that the 2026 tick season was on track to be one of the worst in a decade.
“I started TickZone this year because of the record tick season,” said Burnett.
TickZone analyzes several factors, including CDC county Lyme data, satellite forest cover, and daily weather, to give each town a score between 0 and 100 for tick risk.
“Greene County reports about 356 Lyme cases per 100,000 people a year,” explained Burnett.
Nationwide, the CDC estimates the incidence of Lyme disease at roughly 143 cases per 100,000 people.
“At the summer peak, Hunter carries the highest modeled tick risk in Greene County, followed by Lexington, Halcott, Jewett, Cairo. Risk tracks how wooded a town is: forest cover across Greene County ranges from 68% to 97%, and the more forest and woodland edge a town has, the more habitat ticks have to quest from. Coxsackie sits at the low end,” according to TickZone.
As of Friday, based on TickZone’s scale of zero to 100, all Greene County towns ranked as high risk. Scores included:
Ashland – 85
Athens – 78
Cairo – 81
Catskill – 82
Coxsackie – 74
Durham – 79
Greenville – 79
Halcott – 87
Hunter – 87
Jewett – 86
Lexington – 86
New Baltimore – 78
Prattsville – 86
Windham – 85
And while Lyme disease―caused by black-legged ticks commonly known as deer ticks―is the most prevalent tick-borne illness, there is another growing concern. The lone star tick is aggressively moving north and can transmit a molecule that causes alpha-gal syndrome, a food allergy primarily to red meat and, in some cases, dairy products.
The CDC has confirmed established lone star tick populations in the Hudson Valley.
Since 2015, the New York State Department of Health (DOH) has also reported an average of 600 babesiosis infections and an average of 1,300 anaplasmosis infections each year, as well as cases of more rare diseases such as ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and Powassan virus disease. All these diseases can vary in severity, but without treatment, they can cause serious illness and even death, DOH warns.
But for Burnett it was Lyme disease that sparked him to develop TickZone.
“My younger brother had Lyme a while back. He recovered and we caught it early but going through that is part of why I took the problem seriously,” he explained.
“I wanted to build something that gives people a simple daily read on the tick risk in their own town, so they know when to be careful,” Burnett said.
