Cicada Invasion this Year?

 Yes, you read the title right. Unfortunately, once soil temperatures reach 68 degrees 8 inches into the ground, billions of cicadas will start to emerge from the ground and invade the DMV area. We are being affected by Brood X cicadas this year.

The darker orange areas are where the cicadas will be invading in this year, 2021, while the lighter orange/brown areas are where they have invaded historically. And in DC, soil temps are already becoming very close.

This tweet from Ryan Miller says that cicadas will start to emerge soon when temps reach 64 F at a depth of 8 inches.

Then, he shows a photo of a thermometer measuring a soil temperature of 63.6 F. And it's already started in some places.

This was a photo from Springfield, VA(Fairfax County), and it shows cicadas already starting to emerge from the ground. I would be confident enough to say that in our southern areas, there are already a good amount of cicadas starting to emerge. I haven't found any reports besides this photo though.

This is what happened during the cicada invasion of 2004(it affected our area). Some started to come out in mid-April, and then when May arrived, they really started to boom, and then they started to fall after early- June.

So, when will the rest of the cicadas emerge throughout the DMV area? Well, although some of them are starting to emerge in areas, they won't really start to explode and invade until May, as stated by the Capital Weather Gang. We have a few more weeks before we really start to see them everywhere. Temps in the next 10 days will be in the 50s and that means that soil temps will cool, delaying the main arrival of cicadas. There will be some early ones coming out, but as stated before, they won't really take over until May.