It’s Raining… Cicadas? Weather Radars Are Picking Up Brood X
"So likely CICADAS being picked up by the radar beam."
It’s been 17 years since the Brood X cicadas have been above ground.
This summer, that massive swarm of cicadas is emerging this summer for the first time since 2004. The swarm of bugs that came out of the ground this year is so massive it’s being picked up on weather radars — but the sky isn’t raining with them.
Millions of them have emerged in massive swarms where they shed their exoskeletons and sprout wings. It takes approximately four to six weeks for the bugs to complete the process, and procreate before the new brood burrows themselves back into the ground for close to another two decades.
Currently, the cicadas are swarming. They’re noisy and a nuisance, and it’s basically raining bugs. Not literally, but there are so many of them they’re being picked up on weather radar as if they were a storm cloud.
“THIS is not rain, not ground clutter,” NBC meteorologist Lauryn Ricketts tweeted on June 7. “So likely CICADAS being picked up by the radar beam.”
