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Cicadas to Invade East This Spring and Summer

November 3, 2020
By WeatherBug's Alexa Maines
Those noisy insects that appear more than a decade apart during the summer are making a return to the Mid-Atlantic this year.
 
Cicadas are red-eyed, non-poisonous, creepy looking insects that make constant buzzing noises when they emerge from the ground every 13 or 17 years. They usually emerge in middle-to-late May when the soil hits about 65 degrees.  A group of cicadas is called a brood.
 
This year’s brood is categorized as “Brood V” and has not emerged since 1999. As late spring unfolds, billions of these creepy crawlers will emerge in eastern Ohio, southwest Pennsylvania, western Maryland, northwestern Virginia and eastern Long Island, N.Y. Fortunately, this is not the worst brood of cicadas; the largest batch of cicadas, Brood X, last emerged in 2004 and wreaked havoc from Illinois to New York and as far south as Georgia. The brood this year is just as annoying and loud as Brood V, but it impacts a smaller geographic area.
 
Smaller trees may require netting to protect their fragile branches from dying and “flagging” that occurs when females lay their eggs in tree branches. Even though these creepy, red-eyed insects may sound annoying and appear disgusting, they are virtually harmless and provide food to animals higher up on the food chain. If you have large, sturdy trees then you don’t need to worry about protecting them since the branches are strong enough to withstand any damage from feeding or egg-laying.
 
The cicadas should mate, lay eggs and die by July and the quiet offspring will hatch by September, only to burrow underground. This brood of cicadas will not be seen again until 2033, but the next brood (VI) will emerge next spring in the Carolinas and Georgia. Brood X will not emerge until 2021.
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Story Image: Cicadas run rampant in Virginia in 2013. Source: The MattSanner