Some people eagerly await the presence of cicadas, seeing them as a species that symbolizes summer. Others can’t wait for them to go away, overwhelmed by the large number of them in one place and their loud cries.
Whether you want to know when to start closing your windows and listening to white noise, or when your song of summer will be here, you are likely wondering, “when do the cicadas come out?” This article will explain these unique insects more to you, and help you understand when they come out of the ground and start singing.
About Cicadas
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Cicadas are an insect most known for their loud calls during the summer months. They are found in a variety of countries, including the United States. They are fairly large insects, measuring close to two inches in length when fully grown.
They are normally the color of the plants they will rest on, coming in shades of green, black, and brown. However, sometimes they may have bright-colored eyes that are white, blue, or yellow. There are two kinds of cicadas, the annual ones and the periodical ones.
The periodical cicadas are so named because they only come out of the ground every so often. Usually, more than a decade passes before they will emerge from the ground. These cicadas tend to be smaller, closer to one inch than two.
Cicadas emerge from the ground to mate. Once they are done, the females will lay their eggs in trees. When the cicadas emerge from their eggs, they are in their nymph forms and will live in the ground until they are adults.
Though most cicadas are called annual species, they don’t actually emerge every year. Often, the window is every two to five years. They will stay nymphs until they are ready to come out of the ground. Then they will go to trees and tall plants, shed their exoskeleton, and turn into adults.
Once they reach adulthood, they only have a month or so before they will die off and the cycle repeats.
Interestingly, while a lot of countries have annual cicadas, the United States is the only place that has periodic cicadas. These are a group of seven species that have somewhere between 13 and 17-year life cycles. Overall, there are a total of 3,400 species, with the rest being annual cicadas.
These cicadas only appear in the eastern part of the USA. They are all part of the Magicicada genus. In their off years, they will be quiet and hidden for several years. When they reach adulthood, most of the group will come out at once, leading to huge numbers of cicadas.
And by huge, the estimates are around a million to a million and a half cicadas per acre in the 10 to 15 states they inhabit. They might not emerge all at once, as there are always stragglers that emerge early or late, but there is still an estimate of millions to trillions that emerge all at once.
There are sometimes lower numbers, as the 13 and 17-year cicada timelines rarely line up, and in some years, the cicadas almost all go extinct before they emerge, such as in 2022. However, between them and the annual cicadas, there are still plenty of them singing.
Singing for cicadas is all about mating. It is only the males that sing, hiding up in treetops and tall plants as they try and get mates. The singing can get incredibly loud, easily reaching 80 to 100 decibels in volume when the males get together. This is comparable to the sound of a jackhammer.
When Do the Cicadas Come Out?
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Cicadas tend to emerge from the ground when certain temperature ranges are met for a few weeks at a time. Generally, the guideline is that the soil temperatures have to be around 64 degrees Fahrenheit at about a foot to a foot and a half underground. Once these temperatures are reached, the cicadas will come out of the ground.
In the United States, this tends to be in the window of May to August. Back in the 1950s, most of the time, the window was closer to the end of May to late June. However, with rising temperatures, it is creeping closer and closer to the beginning of May or even sooner.
Additionally, it depends on where you live in the United States. Those more in the southernmost part of the country will have cicadas emerge earlier as they reach warmer temperatures sooner. For places like New York and Pennsylvania, it will likely be later in June, July, or even early August before they will come out.
It doesn’t matter if they are periodical or annual cicadas, they come out around the same time of the year. The only difference is which years they emerge.
In other countries, it tends to be a bit later. In Africa, for example, since they are close to the equator and in the southern hemisphere, cicadas tend to come out in October.
Because of the unique timelines of cicadas, some years may be full of their cries and some years may be almost silent. You may think you have missed them coming out, or it hasn’t happened yet, but it is just quiet.
If you are unsure, you can easily check online for cicada forecasts for your state to see when they are estimated to come out, and which broods are emerging.