The Cicadas Are Coming Back

Back in 2004 our state was hit with the last brood of cicadas. At their peak in June their sound was deafening- it was like a phaser rifle on overload. Now it is reported that a second brood is ready to emerge and it is expected to be as big if not bigger than the 2004 brood.

From the DailyMail here:

Billions of cicadas are expected to swarm the East Coast from New England to North Carolina this spring after remaining underground since the 1990s. The Brood II cicadas are expected to appear in large concentrations along the East Coast between mid-April and late May, a ritual nearly two decades in the making.

‘Brood II is a periodic cicada that hatches out every 17 years,’ Craig Gibbs, an entomologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Queens Zoo, told CBS News.

The cicadas go through five stages underground feeding on tree bark and roots before they reappear above the surface.
‘What will happen is the nymphs will come up and they will shed their nymphal skin and they’ll crawl up into the trees and they’ll take about five days to harden and then they’ll start for next four to six weeks calling and looking for mates,’ said Gibbs.
The bugs will begin to arrive throughout several states to breed as the ground warms to 64 degrees and hotter.

And if the noise isn’t bad enough, at the end of their lives, these flying walnuts start dropping out of the sky, landing in your hair, going down your shirt, collecting on awnings by the thousands.