Cicada Invasion In VA This Year: See When Brood XIV Arrives

VIRGINIA — A noisy spring is ahead in more than a dozen states, including Virginia, when millions of periodic cicadas will emerge from the ground in one of the marvels of nature.

Although less spectacular than 2024’s rare dual emergence of periodical cicadas, millions of Brood XIV of the 17-year periodical cicadas will emerge in 13 states: Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

That may seem especially apocalyptic to people who are freaked out at the thought of these clumsy, red-eyed bugs falling on them from trees or possibly deliberately squirting pee on them. But the emergence could mean a “cicada-cation” tourism boost to Virginia among curious visitors from states in the western half of the country that don’t have periodical cicadas.

Periodical cicadas spend most of their lives underground as nymphs feeding off the sap of tree roots. They transform into adults when they climb out of the ground, shed their exoskeletons, set up a cacophony of noise with mating calls, lay eggs and die, starting the 17-cycle anew.

There are three broods of 13-year cicadas and 12 broods of 17-year cicadas. Brood XIV is also known as the “Great(er) Eastern Brood.”

Here are some things to know:

When Will Cicadas Emerge In Virginia?

When the cicadas will begin tunneling out of the ground in Virginia depends on soil temperatures, but they typically start coming out of the ground in early May and last well into June.

Climate change could mess with cicadas’ body clocks and affect the timing of their emergence. In 2024, Brood XIX of the 13-year cicadas came out of the ground about two weeks ahead of schedule, CBS News reported.

John Cooley, a University of Connecticut cicada researcher who maps cicada broods, told NBC News last year that he expects the range of periodical cicada to shift northward as the climate warms and the plant species they prefer shift north.

The number of “stragglers” — cicadas that emerge outside of their expected time frame. They can emerge years before or after the majority of their brood members.

“If you look at the data, we definitely have more reports of straggling now than we ever did in the past,” Cooley said.

How Loud Are They?

The males come out of the ground in full voice, vibrating their tymbals — drum-like membranes on their abdomens, an anatomical structure that conveys a certain intimacy — in a concerto of cicada romance.

Because their brief time above ground is so fraught with danger, periodical cicadas time their synchronized emergence at night when many of their predators are sleeping.

The strategy isn’t perfect. Male cicadas make so much noise with their vibrating tymbals that every predator around knows they’ve popped out of the ground.

They are very, very loud.

Their chirping — incessant chirping, many say — can reach 100 decibels, as loud as a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with straight pipes or a jackhammer running full bore into concrete or a lawn mower cutting through tall grass.

They all — well most of them; nature is brutal — eventually make in the treetops in this choreographed cicada copulation. The females switch partners, hooking up with as many of the fellas as they can because that’s how the species continues.

Once the deed is done, females make slits in tree branches to lay their eggs. All the adults die off, and their decaying bodies add nutrients to the soil.

Meanwhile, life goes on. The eggs hatch in about six or seven weeks. Nymphs fall to the ground and burrow into the soil, where the cycle begins anew. And just as their parents did in 2025, they will emerge en masse in another 17 years.

Cicadas Are Evolutionary Superheroes

Even if you don’t live in cicada country, you can’t help but delight in their evolutionary superstardom.

Scientists can’t fully explain periodic cicadas’ evolutionary strategy. One theory is that their periodic emergence is timed to avoid certain predators. Tulane University biologist Keith Clay calls the emergence of periodical cicadas “one of the most unusual biological phenomena on Earth.”

One theory is that cicadas, which are lousy flyers and a veritable fast-food buffet for predators like copperheads, have adapted to ensure they don’t all get eaten up. Even if predators have a feast, there are so many of them that enough survive to mate and lay eggs.

If they came out every 16 years, for example, predators with two-, four- and eight-year cycles would be around at the same time of year to eat them.

“The main hypothesis is that it's very difficult for predators to have a similar life cycle, where they could actually specialize on these cicadas 'cause they also would have to have a 17-year life cycle,” Clay said in an interview with the American Association for the Advancement of Science three years ago when another brood of 17-year cicadas emerged.

Another hypothesis about the synchronized emergence of periodical cicadas is that the forced developmental delay was an adaptation to climate cooling during the ice ages.

Cicadas Are Edible

This could be the year Virginia residents get over the “ew” factor and decide for themselves if cicadas, the so-called “shrimp of the land,” taste like the ocean crustaceans. Cicada cuisine, which started as a joke in 2008 when University of Maryland Ph.D. candidate Jenna Jadin created “Cicada-licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicadas,” has gone mainstream.

“It was kind of a joke and was really just something to do to entertain myself while I was doing my research,” Jadin told Maryland Today in 2021. “But it was also a way to sort of say, ‘Look, they’re so not scary … you can just walk outside and catch them and eat them if you want to, because Native Americans have been doing this in the past and people world over eat all kinds of insects every day.’ ”