Year of the cicadas: two 17-year broods wake up at once

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/07/year-of-the-cicadas-two-17-year-broods-wake-up-at-once.html

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Title disagrees with article. It is a 17 year brood and a 13 year brood lining up. If it was two 17-year broods then they are really the same brood.

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And I see the New York Times, in their usual money-grab, have put which states are impacted below the “Are you a subscriber? Guess you don’t get to find out” advertisement.

So, here’s a link to a free-to-read Newsweek article with the same information, published last month:

And another from Scientific America: A ‘Double Brood’ of Periodical Cicadas Will Emerge in 2024 | Scientific American

Oh, and the states involved? There are maps at both links, though not in the part of the NYT link readable without a subscription, so here you go: Brood XIII southern Wisconsin to central Illinois, as well as parts of Iowa, Indiana and Michigan. Brood XIX: southern Iowa to the Carolinas, Missouri, southern Illinois and western Kentucky, even a bit of Virginia according to the maps.

The only overlap is part of Illinois, so I do feel bad for some of my relatives who live right there, can’t imagine they’ll enjoy it. I don’t think I’ll go visit them during the . . . festivities.

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I love the long-cycle cicadas emerging. The sound is so unearthly.

Greetings from Illinois!

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Love the sound of cicadas. Reminds me of summer vacation. :grinning:

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Links! Links are good. I’ve been following cicada mania for years.

UCONN’s cicada site seems good too.

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I wanted to make some kind of cryptography joke about interbreeding, but then I looked it up and apparently broods are really weird and are made up of multiple species and stuff.

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One cool thing to do when they’re out is to go to an arboretum (Morton Arboretum in the Chicago suburbs is an excellent example).

The sound is like nature dialed up to 11.

You think you’ve heard insects? Frogs? Yeah, those are easy listening mode.

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I’ve only heard them once before - in AZ of all places in the high desert an hour north of PHX.
There weren’t that many, but it was still really loud. I can’t imagine what it’s like in the midwest.
My wife (from the midwest) says it’s really annoying. :slight_smile:

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Looks like the worst is in central Illinois, which I’m happy for them to have, as a northerner. They always complain that Chicago gets everything. Now they get both full eclipse and double cicada, plus their normal nearly 5:1 ratio on benefits vs tax paid.

During of the bigger broods, around 30-ish years ago, I was working at McDonald’s (former) corporate HQ in Oakbrook which is heavily wooded. Growing up in Chicago, with the only trees found on my Boy Scout trips, I’d never even seen a cicada before. They were all over, covering the ground, or at least their shells were. They make a lovely crunchy pop when you’d walk.

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Clearly a warning about Trump the anti-christ, right? The build-up to a horror-movie clash.

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I’d just like to show appreciation for the fact that Brood XIII has the 17-year cycle, while Brood XIX has the 13-year cycle. Keeping us from getting lazy!

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It’s also like Prime Time for prime numbers!

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“Yeah, I’m part of this 17 year brood. No, not that one, the good one.”

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Thank you so much!

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Yeah, if they were both 17 year broods, they would either line up every year, or never.

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Hope you all remembered to buy sesame seed futures.

Can they register for voting?

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