So where are the cicadas?

Factual Questions
1

I live in suburban Chicago and this is supposed to be our year. I live by a pretty decently wooded area, and every night on the news this week they’ve shown all sorts of cicada footage. Swarms and swarms of cicadas. People eating cicadas. Children squealing over them.

So why haven’t I seen a single one yet? Where are the cicadas?

2

There’s at least one other current thread about this. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=421857&highlight=cicadas I guess I’ll let this one stay open if people contribute the reasoning behind this, rather than shared experiences.

samclem GQ moderator

3

Well for one thing, it’s not the dog-days of summer quite yet. Seems to me anecdotally they are at their most raucous and loud when it is the hottest.

4

Periodical cicadas are typically out well beofre the hottest part of the year. They’re different from the common-everywhere and far-less-numerous annual cicadas (or “dog-day” cicadas). Periodicals usually come out in mid-May and are mostly gone by the start of July.

We got them here in SW Ohio a few years ago (our local “brood” is on a different point in the 17-year cycle). When it occurred, I didn’t see a one in my neighborhood, but there were tons in the older neighborhoods a couple miles away, and a lot in the less-developed areas a few miles in the other direction. My part of town was forest and farmland 50 years ago, and has since been developed. The process of clearing trees and turning over land disrupts the local cicada population, and it takes them a while to move back in. Getting a chance to only move a short distance once every 17 years means it takes a while.

You may have just found yourself in a pocket of too-recently disturbed land.

5

I am in an older Chicago neighborhood with mature trees. Nothing yet. (According to the experts, they should have been out a few days ago.)

6

I saw my first cicadas today. Here are two interactive maps where people can report their sightings.

http://cicadas.lcfpd.org/cicadamap/

I checked the Chicago Tribune archives from 1990 and some people raised the same point. The archives showed that the cicadas were not an even blanket over the Chicago area.

IOW, the natural and expected non-uniform distribution of the swarms has not been emphasized in the reporting, making the experts look bad.

Here’s an excerpt from one article.