A massive cloud of cicadas was picked up late Monday morning over the metropolitan Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area — a swarm so thick it resembled a rainstorm on weather radar.
The cicadas of Brood X (the X is the Roman numeral for 10) have been emerging in about 15 states from Indiana to Georgia to New York; they’re coming out now in massive numbers in Tennessee and North Carolina.
The cicadas are coming out mostly at dusk to try to avoid everything that wants to eat them, climbing up trees or anything vertical. Once off the ground, they shed their skins and try to survive that vulnerable stage before they become dinner to a host of critters including ants, birds, dogs and cats.
America is the only place in the world that has periodic cicadas that stay underground for either 13 or 17 years, said entomologist John Cooley of the University of Connecticut.
The bugs only emerge in large numbers when the ground temperature reaches 64 degrees. That’s happening earlier in the calendar in recent years because of climate change, said entomologist Gene Kritsky. Before 1950, they used to emerge at the end of May; now they’re coming out weeks earlier.
Though there have been some early bugs in Maryland and Ohio, soil temperatures have been in the low 60s.
They aren’t locusts, and the only plants they damage are young trees, which can be netted. The year after a big batch of cicadas, trees actually do better because dead bugs serve as fertilizer, Kritsky said.
People tend to be scared of the wrong insects, says University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum. The mosquito kills more people than any other animals because of malaria and other diseases. Yet some people really dread the cicada emergence, she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
About the Author
