Billions of noisy cicadas to invade the U.S. this spring (2024)

Ready for a big — and loud — invasion of scary-looking insects? Experts say billions of cicadas will be emerging from the ground in parts of the United States this spring in a very rare event that will see two different groups of these bugs popping up at the same time.

One large group of cicadas, known as Brood XIII or Brood 13, will emerge after 17 years of living in the ground, while another major group, Brood XIX or Brood 19, will pop up after 13 years of surviving below the earth, experts say. For the first time in 221 years, both of these broods will be surfacing at about the same time — this spring.

“The last time these two particular broods emerged together was in 1803,” said Gene Kritsky, a cicada expert and retired biology professor from Mount St Joseph University in Ohio. To get an idea of how long ago that was, Kritsky noted, “Thomas Jefferson was president.”

But not every state in the country will have an opportunity to see, or hear, these winged insects with bulging red eyes when they start crawling up from the ground in the next few months and making ear-piercing mating calls.

Kritsky told NJ Advance Media that one group of cicadas, Brood 13, will be concentrated in northern Illinois, eastern Iowa, northwestern Indiana and southern Wisconsin.

He said the Brood 19 cicadas will be emerging from the ground in places where they have been seen in the past — various parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

These two broods are not known to live in New Jersey, New York or Pennsylvania, so these states will miss out on this year’s big cicada invasion. Parts of our region of the country had big, loud swarms of Brood X cicadas in 2021. Those cicadas have a 17-year life cycle, so they won’t be returning here until 2038.

Kritsky said a different class of cicadas, known as Brood 14, are scheduled to pop up in parts of west-central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania in the spring of 2025. And Brood 2 cicadas are set to return to many areas of the Garden State in 2030; they were last seen here in the spring of 2013.

In the meantime, people in the New Jersey region will continue to hear several types of annual cicadas — those that have short life cycles — making a racket each summer, usually in July and August.

Although they are called annual cicadas, they typically remain underground anywhere from four to seven years, Kritsky noted. But they emerge in groups in staggered years, so basically some pop out each summer.

This spring’s cicada invasion

As for this spring’s rare double cicada invasion, people in some areas of the Southeast and Midwest will begin to hear the winged critters in another three months, when soil temperatures get warm enough.

“In parts of the Southeast, where Brood XIX cicadas make their home, the insects will likely start to pop up from underground beginning in late April,” according to a report by NBC News. “Then, on a rolling basis as conditions warm throughout the Southeast and Midwest, more cicadas will surface through May and June. Once they reach the surface, the insects shed their nymph exoskeletons and unfurl their wings. It typically takes several more days for their adult skin to harden.”

Adult cicadas usually spend several weeks looking for a mate and laying eggs before they die. When the cicadas mate up in the trees, each female can produce as many as 500 eggs, which are deposited into small slits that the insects dig into thin tree branches.

“New nymphs hatch from the eggs, they crawl out of the nest and literally drop to the ground,” Kritsky said in an interview during the Brood X emergence in 2021. “As soon as they hit the ground, they crawl to a blade of grass, then start digging underground.”

The nymphs will feed on grass roots for several days, then spend 13 years or 17 years underground — depending on which brood they are — feeding on the sap of tree roots.

Big target zone for 2024 invasion

Kritsky said not everyone in all of the states mentioned above will see or hear the cicadas this spring, because their clusters are “patchy.”

But the big target zone for this year’s cicada invasion will likely be a narrow strip of land in central Illinois, where Kritsky said cicadas from both Brood 13 and Brood 19 have been identified in the past. Those insects are both on a life cycle in which they will begin to appear this spring.

Figuring out which brood they belong to will not be an easy task, Kritsky noted, because both groups of cicadas look very similar in size and color, with the same red eyes.

“It’s not like they wear uniforms with numbers on them,” he said with a laugh.

Regardless of which brood the cicadas belong to, they will be making loud mating calls.

“The insects are known to emit a high-pitched buzz, or mating song, that can reach up to 100 decibels,” NBC News noted. That’s ”roughly equivalent to a motorcycle or jackhammer.”

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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com or on X at @LensReality.