Don’t call it a comeback; they’ve been here for years. Some time around May, after a long, underground slumber, a new brood of 17-year periodical cicadas is set to burrow from the earth and begin noisy courtships in West Virginia and surrounding states.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In two months, millions of extremely loud, five-eyed, well-rested insects will burrow their way out of the ground across much of West Virginia, and for the next four to six weeks, party like it’s 1999.
That’s the year members of the state’s largest periodical cicada population, known as Brood V, last tunneled out of their underground burrows. They attached themselves to nearby vegetation or man-made surfaces like porch screens, shed their nymph-stage exoskeletons and emerged as adults, triggering a brief and noisy period of courting and mating followed by egg-laying and death.
The cicadas are expected to begin providing background music for all things outdoors, in many of the state’s northern and central counties, starting in mid-May…
