Too many spiders

I like spiders well enough; this one had caught a yellowjacket for breakfast. But these guys have webs everywhere you go. This weekend, I swept a stick ahead of me to clear a trail. I noted previously there seemed to be many spiders this year; they've grown in size and their webs are larger now. I never saw so many before, and wondered whether this might be a consequence of the dry weather. Perhaps in the past, rain showers and winds have kept most of the webs cleared from the understory.