BLACKSBURG, Va. – The 17-year cicadas are back, but the noise won’t last for long.
For some in Southwest Virginia the summertime sound is the loudest it’s been in nearly two decades.
“If you have the whole population singing at one time, it’s a high sound just emanating from the canopies of the trees,” said Virginia Tech entomology professor Doug Pfeiffer.
After spending 17 years underground, millions of cicadas are back. This particular group, called a brood, invades southwest Virginia and parts of North Carolina and West Virginia.
Claytor Lake State Park has been hit particularly hard this year.
“This is not a wide geographic distribution but it can be very intense,” Pfeiffer said.
James Whitlow - Snow Creek
Pfeiffer said there could be as many as 1.5 million cicadas in a single acre.
“That was about 300 per square yard and that seems like a huge number and it is but it's really believable,” Pfeiffer said.
The cicadas aren't dangerous to you, but they can kill trees causing major economic impact for orchards and vineyards.
“At best, it can set back bearing of the tree at least a year,” Pfeiffer said.
The brood is actually a bit smaller this year thanks to cooler weather when the cicadas emerged mid-May.
They'll only stick around another couple of weeks and are not expected to return to the places they're calling home this year until 2037.
“This is a preview of another brood that is coming out next year,” Pfeiffer said.
The 17-year cicadas are just the periodical cicadas. There’s a whole other group of annual cicadas expected to emerge in our area later this summer.