Why is it raining from my ducts and what do I do to fix it?

I was in the basement today and noticed it smelled a bit wet by the closet. I went in and found some pretty serious condensation dripping off the air ducts in there.

I wiped it all down, and I opened that vent you see in the first pic. It was closed all the way previously, and I thought maybe that was making it too warm in that area and therefore leading to the condensation.

I went to the other areas where ducts are exposed in the basement. I found a few other damp spots, but none were nearly as bad as the spot in this photo. The only one that came close were the really big ducts right next to the furnace stack.

From what I've read, this is from hot, humid air meeting the cold sheet metal. We definitely have hot, humid air here in southern MO. I'm a bit surprised because this is our second summer in this house, and we didn't get this last summer. I don't think it's any hotter or wetter this year.

Anyway, the big question is, what do I do? Is it just as simple as wrapping those suckers with insulation? What about where they go above the ceiling in finished parts of the basement and I can't reach?

Also, how worried do I need to be about the fact that this condensation was dripping all over a bunch of wires? That "closet" houses the breaker box, so there area a lot of wires coming out of there. One of the offshooting ducts went above several wires and dripped on them.

Any help/advice would be awesome. I'm a bit freaked out.

 

Edit: I just remembered that one difference between this year and last year is that we had weatherization work done in early March. The local power company does free weatherization audits and gives credits if you get the work done. The biggest thing we had done was insulation added in the attic. They also tuned the furnace, caulked windows, weatherstripped doors, stuff like that. Would that do it, and does that change the fix?

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