If Cicadas Are All Over Illinois, Why Don’t I Hear Them?

We haven't talked enough about cicadas, have we?

We told you this week that the predicted double-brood emergence of cicadas is spreading all over Illinois. We're ending up with scenes like this:

The number one comment/question we got when we posted it was stuff like:

• lol no I don't hear them
• I live in the QC and I haven't heard or seen one yet
• What cicadas? 

We're not making up a cicada invasion for funsies, fam.

Why You Haven't Heard Them

Besides the fact that they didn't all emerge on the same night at the same time, experts say that it takes five days after a cicada emerges for it to start singing.

Marianne Alleyne, an assistant professor in entomology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Chicago station WGN:

It takes a few days, maybe a week, for the adult cicadas to start making noise (their exoskeleton needs to harden completely). So eventually all the places where cicadas emerged will hear the noise. Because emergences didn’t happen all in the same night not all areas will start hearing the sound at the same time. But it will happen soon enough.

A lot of you have told us cicadas are everywhere in Naperville and around Illinois City. From a continuous map of cicada reports, the emergence is spreading west of Chicago towards the QCA and is crossing into eastern Iowa now.

Bottom line: we're going to see them well before the dog-day cicadas emerge in late July. You may even miss not hearing them before too long.