Two Cicada Broods Emerge Together(weather.com)
weather.com
Two Cicada Broods Emerge Together
https://weather.com/science/nature/video/two-cicada-broods-unite-for-first-time-in-221-years
31 comments
I hate news pages that are just a video. I prefer to just casually read news instead of having to watch a whole video on the topic. I find Apple News shows me a ton of these type of articles (looking at you MSNBC) and I wish I could toggle some option to never see pages like that again.
An alternative solution, stop reading the news alltogethor. Replace it with something either more relaxing or more enriching.
IDK what news you read but every news site i know reads like it was written by dums for dums. You owe yourself better.
IDK what news you read but every news site i know reads like it was written by dums for dums. You owe yourself better.
The title should have been suffixed with ' [video]' according to HN guidelines.
I mean, MSNBC is a cable news channel, so taking clips of its feed and reusing them as news posts is only logical. It's not like they have an army of writers creating news articles. They find things for their hosts to blab about in front of a camera. If you don't like that style, remove it from your feed. Apple News provides tools to remove/hide specific sources from your feed. Complaining about MSNBC providing video only clips is like complaining the Detroit Lions never plays baseball. That's not what they do
Most news anchors don't just wing it though, except in the rare case of live breaking news. The vast majority of the time they read a prepared script off a teleprompter, which is written by - you guessed it - writers. Sometimes the anchors are also the writers, and sometimes they don't always stick 100% to the script, but whoever wrote it and whether it was followed aside, there is a script. I don't see why news channels couldn't publish it alongside the video - it would be useful for hearing-impaired audience at least.
scripts and news articles are not the formatted the same. you wishing something was so just because it was convenient to you does not mean it is magically simple to do. posting news articles is not the wheel house of an MSNBC. they are an organization centered around delivering a video news feed. when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail
For those not familiar with major brood years, it is a sight to see. Depending on where you are, there is a constant ambient echo of cicada shrills. When living outside Washington DC I'd leave the windows and balcony door open to wake up to the cacophony, which started around dawn. Thousands of cicadas would fly across the interstate (Dulles Toll Road in my case) and local parks.
The peak lasts not more than two weeks and in two months everything is gone, except mounds of cicada exoskeletons and bodies.
The peak lasts not more than two weeks and in two months everything is gone, except mounds of cicada exoskeletons and bodies.
> For those not familiar with major brood years, it is a sight to see.
Around my house this is also known as my cat's happy time. His favorite stalk/catch/toy is a cicada. They respond in the most satisfying ways for him. They make noise. They flop around. They fly. They are the dumbest things around. They are the ultimate free toy. EXCEPT for when they are in the house. Then, they are the most annoying thing, and cause for quite the ruckus as the cat is jumping on/over/off of anything/everything in an attempt to re-catch the thing bouncing off the walls/ceiling
Around my house this is also known as my cat's happy time. His favorite stalk/catch/toy is a cicada. They respond in the most satisfying ways for him. They make noise. They flop around. They fly. They are the dumbest things around. They are the ultimate free toy. EXCEPT for when they are in the house. Then, they are the most annoying thing, and cause for quite the ruckus as the cat is jumping on/over/off of anything/everything in an attempt to re-catch the thing bouncing off the walls/ceiling
The story is a little misleading.
> 2024 will mark a rare natural event as two distinct cicada broods emerge together for the first time in over two centuries.
That means these two particular broods haven't seen each other in that long. It doesn't mean no broods have coincided in the last two centuries, though that makes for punchier stories.
https://www.newsweek.com/cicadas-brood-both-emerging-same-ti...
There are 15 broods in total. They emerge on 13- or 17-year cycles.
https://cicadas.uconn.edu/broods/
When I lived in the PNW, I really missed cicadas. Am looking forward to this year's songs!
> 2024 will mark a rare natural event as two distinct cicada broods emerge together for the first time in over two centuries.
That means these two particular broods haven't seen each other in that long. It doesn't mean no broods have coincided in the last two centuries, though that makes for punchier stories.
https://www.newsweek.com/cicadas-brood-both-emerging-same-ti...
There are 15 broods in total. They emerge on 13- or 17-year cycles.
https://cicadas.uconn.edu/broods/
When I lived in the PNW, I really missed cicadas. Am looking forward to this year's songs!
> That means these two particular broods haven't seen each other in that long. It doesn't mean no broods have coincided in the last two centuries, though that makes for punchier stories.
Based on the table linked in this thread, it's rare enough to be interesting on its own. Geographical overlap of broods emerging doesn't appear to have happened since 1998 and then only in Oklahoma.
But yeah, it's weather.com, they've been clickbait since not long after clickbait began.
Based on the table linked in this thread, it's rare enough to be interesting on its own. Geographical overlap of broods emerging doesn't appear to have happened since 1998 and then only in Oklahoma.
But yeah, it's weather.com, they've been clickbait since not long after clickbait began.
A good resource, with all the broods listed, including the two that are going to emerge this year (North Illinois Brood and Great Southern Brood) and the typical ranges of each brood: https://cicadas.uconn.edu/broods/
Just did a search, found this image [1]. It looks like the geographical overlap is a small area in Illinois (light orange and brown regions in linked image).
[1] https://cdn.britannica.com/32/222432-050-E9798FB1/map-emerge...
[1] https://cdn.britannica.com/32/222432-050-E9798FB1/map-emerge...
Here's a better map [1] that shows the overlap better with sample data from the broods, it's an arc from Springfield to about Kankakee, about 120 miles.
[1] https://cicadas.uconn.edu/broods/
[1] https://cicadas.uconn.edu/broods/
We definitely have cicadas in Florida, but that map doesn't show any. Weird.
Sesame crops will be decimated
For those not getting the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxh2X6NjuhY
What’s the precision of individual cicadas being able to follow their regular timeline? Like if 10,000 cicadas in one area are in a 13 year cycle how many will accidentally wake up before then?
I can’t give you any hard numbers but enough of the 2024 brood was definitely noisy last summer in Chicago.
Northern Illinois actually has annual cicadas, so we get the noise every year to some degree. I'm inclined to believe these are 17 year critters that have fallen out of sync over the centuries so you get a continuous stream now.
The major brood here, XIII, has a sub-brood that shows up 4 years ahead of time. 2020 was very noisy.
The major brood here, XIII, has a sub-brood that shows up 4 years ahead of time. 2020 was very noisy.
The concept of the cicada lifecycle fills me with awe and wonder.
Could you imagine spending a majority of your life below ground. All you know is soil. You are pretty slow and clumsy burrowing around in the below ground world.
Then, you go through this metamorphosis. Not only do you reach an entirely different plane of existence (going from the below ground world to the above ground world) - but you enter that new world with wings free to travel in 3 dimensions at high speeds. You have sun, weather, mammals, cars, birds, buildings, trees... All things you are experiencing for the first time. And you get two weeks to pack it all in during a frantic mating frenzy.
Imagine if this experience happened to you.
Could you imagine spending a majority of your life below ground. All you know is soil. You are pretty slow and clumsy burrowing around in the below ground world.
Then, you go through this metamorphosis. Not only do you reach an entirely different plane of existence (going from the below ground world to the above ground world) - but you enter that new world with wings free to travel in 3 dimensions at high speeds. You have sun, weather, mammals, cars, birds, buildings, trees... All things you are experiencing for the first time. And you get two weeks to pack it all in during a frantic mating frenzy.
Imagine if this experience happened to you.
You remind me a little of Stendhal and the mayflies towards the end of The Red and the Black:
“In the same way, death, life and eternity, are very simple things for anyone who has organs sufficiently vast to conceive them. An ephemeral fly is born at nine o’clock in the morning in the long summer days, to die at five o’clock in the evening. How is it to understand the word ‘night’?”
It is quite the contrast, though, to the cicada-epiphany you were imagining.
“In the same way, death, life and eternity, are very simple things for anyone who has organs sufficiently vast to conceive them. An ephemeral fly is born at nine o’clock in the morning in the long summer days, to die at five o’clock in the evening. How is it to understand the word ‘night’?”
It is quite the contrast, though, to the cicada-epiphany you were imagining.
When I was a kid in south Georgia there was a year where two other cicada broods lined up. The sustained volume in and around the woods was measured at well over 85dB and peaking much higher locally, to the extent that if the woods were a workplace OSHA would require a hearing protection plan to be implemented. It sounded like there was a racetrack just over the hill, but in every direction.
In Japan, they have a different species of cicada, and cicadas reliably emerge every single summer. As a result, the sound of cicadas is a popular shorthand for summertime in Japanese media: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/cicadas-in-japan/
Cicadas like that exist in different places around the world, including in the southern United States. They're a kind of regional mascot in Provence.
yeah I went to Tennessee on holiday in 2017 (from Scotland) and thought I'd managed to time it perfectly for a brood emerging, but one of the locals said it was a yearly occurrence. It was still fantastic to hear that constant background noise
Does anyone know where to find some really good, high fidelity, stereo recordings of cicadas? I've tried making recordings but just cannot capture the sonic experience very well at all.
Kind of related Numberphile video: https://youtu.be/j7jfHM-mMC4?si=gjHKuqLqgAXk5_J0
RIP Christopher Evan Welch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxh2X6NjuhY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxh2X6NjuhY
God no. This sound awful. I can’t think of anything creepier than cicadas.