Trillion cicadas expected across the country

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Nearly a trillion cicadas are set to emerge across the U.S. over the next few months.

2024 is a rare double emergence, when two different broods of periodical cicadas will emerge. A brood is a grouping of cicadas.

Brood 19 emerges after 13 years underground and covers parts of the south and lower midwest. Brood 13 emerges after 17 years underground and covers the Midwest.

Floyd Shockley, entomologist and collections manager at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, said it’s rare to see these two broods together.

“Brood 13 and brood 19 have not been seen together for the last 221 years,” Shockley said.

Brood 13 is particularly dense at nearly 1.5 million cicadas per acre.

If you can’t see them, you’ll likely hear them.

“Sort of sound like a UFO when you get enough of them singing in one place,” Shockley said.

Shockley said these broods are more distinct looking than the cicadas that come out every year, which are known as dogday cicadas.

Broods 13 and 19 are twice the size and more interestingly colored than dogday cicadas.

“They’ve got dark blue almost black bodies with orange wings,” Shockley said of this year’s broods.

Shockley said cicadas are completely harmless.

“A lot of people get freaked out by them, the slow flight, and the red eyes really concern people, but they’re totally harmless,” Shockley said. “They won’t harm your trees, they won’t harm your gardens, they won’t harm your pets.”

Shockley said for entomologists and researchers like him, this year is a unique opportunity.

”For us this is literally a once in a lifetime, once in a career opportunity to hear them all at the same time in a relatively small area.”

You’ll start noticing these broods in your area once the soil is 65 degrees.

In the south that’s right about now, and in the midwest that will start in several weeks.

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