They're Here: First Cicada Sightings Begin In Chicago Area

CHICAGO — They’re here. Cicada sightings have begun across the Chicago area, with observers taking to social media over the weekend to share their findings.

Billions of the bugs are expected to emerge in Illinois during the coming weeks.

“Working in the yard this afternoon I decided to move some bricks that were next to the neighbors fence,” one reddit user posted Sunday on the r/chicago subreddit. “I’m sure they hadn’t been moved in at least a decade. Anyway, if what I videoed is any indication then the cicada brood under my yard is going to be a massive emergence.”

The post included a recording revealing the insects’ tunnels and a few cicadas.

Another sighting was reported Sunday in the Facebook group Illinois Cicada Watch, where a user posted a photo of a single cicada and reported seeing the bug at Monument Park in northwest Chicago. A different group member spotted a cicada and several tunnels Tuesday in Lombard in dirt previously covered by a yard statue.

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Juvenile cicadas surface after rain when the soil temperature 8 inches below ground level rises above 64 degrees, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are typically expected to appear starting in May for about four weeks, according to the University of Illinois Extension, but climate can affect their emergence, the national administration has said.

In a rare event that hasn’t happened since 1803, Brood XIII, known as the Northern Illinois Brood, and the Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood, are both expected to appear this spring.

The Northern Illinois Brood, as the name implies, will mainly appear in the northern and central parts of the state, according to the university.

The Great Southern Brood will be in southern and central Illinois, with the broods transitioning from one to the other around the Springfield area and more broadly throughout the middle of the state, according to the university.

Brood XIII cicadas also appear in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and a bit of Michigan. The Northern Illinois brood has a reputation for being the largest emergence of cicadas anywhere. According to research by entomologists Monte Lloyd and Henry Dybas at the Field Museum in Chicago, a 1956 brood of Northern Illinois cicadas produced 1.5 million cicadas per acre.

The Great Southern Brood will be found in a much larger area that touches 15 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Cicadas spend most of their lives underground as immature nymphs but surface en masse every 13 or 17 years. Their extraordinarily long life cycle, the longest of any insect on the planet, is part of an evolutionary strategy that has allowed the species to survive for 1.8 million years, or from the Pleistocene Epoch.

Cicadas are about an inch long and have a three-inch wingspan. Their mating calls can be deafening, heralding their arrival above ground with a high-pitched cacophony of buzzing that can reach decibels of 100 or greater — about the same as a subway train, forklift or motorcycle.

Pesticides won’t kill cicadas and are not recommended.