The New Yorker’s website has a post by Michael Lemonick describing a natural wonder than most people would not likely rate as highly as, say, an aurora borealis. But if you happen to be in the USA during the coming months, prepare for a natural shock and awe:

…The chirp of a single Magicicada septendecim, a type of cicada, is hardly noticeable. The simultaneous chirping of a million of them—a very rough estimate of how many insects will populate each infested acre—is not quite deafening, but it’s certainly overwhelming. The sound, a shrill, relentless whine, has been likened to the screech of a jet engine. The Rutgers University entomologist George Hamilton describes listening to them years ago: “You couldn’t hear a radio, even turned up all the way, because of the singing.” It goes on day after day for at least a couple of weeks, around the clock but mostly during the day.

When European colonists first arrived in North America, the cicadas reminded them of the plagues of locusts described in the Bible, which is why, despite the best efforts of modern scientists, they’re commonly known as the “seventeen-year locusts.” But actual locusts are related to grasshoppers, Hamilton said; cicadas are closer kin to aphids and stinkbugs. (Hamilton will be publishing a seminal paper on stinkbugs later this summer, as it happens.)

In the late nineteenth century, naturalists began to identify distinct populations of cicadas, and realized that there were seventeen different broods, which they identified by Roman numerals, covering different (though sometimes overlapping) geographical areas. These areas are confined to the Northeastern U.S.; they’re found nowhere else in the world, Hamilton said. Each brood emerged, in turn, once every seventeen years. (There are also thirteen-year locusts, but they come out in smaller numbers, and don’t inspire headline writers to proclaim “SWAMAGEDDON!” and “CICADAPOCALYPSE!”)

Nowadays, only Brood II (the one that comes out this year) and Brood X attract much notice; most of the other fifteen broods come out to chirp during their appointed years as well, but there aren’t many insects left in any of them. The wholesale deforestation that inevitably comes along with human infestations has destroyed most of their habitat.

Unlike stinkbugs, fortunately, cicadas don’t stink, and aside from the noise pollution they generate they’re harmless. They do fly around for short distances, lumbering along like underpowered cargo planes that can barely stay aloft, occasionally crashing at very low speed into buildings, cars, and pedestrians. The insects are hard on trees and bushes, though, Hamilton said: “They make slits in the ends of branches to lay their eggs, so you get some dieback.” Once the eggs hatch, the cicada nymphs crawl back down the tree and burrow into the ground, where they’ll stay, in the case of Brood II, until 2030…

Read the whole post here.