Here’s where you can expect to see cicadas invade NJ in 2 weeks

Don’t say you weren’t warned. I wrote about the noisy Brood 14 cicadas back in January and how this spring they would be burrowing up and out of the earth and take over entire driveways, sidewalks, yards, and neighborhoods.

And that incessant noise. The mating call of male cicadas has been recorded as loud as 152 decibels. While I think that would be extreme, still, that’s louder than jets at Newark Liberty International Airport (140 dB). Louder than jackhammers (130 dB). Louder than live rock bands (120 dB). Louder than a chainsaw (125dB).

They last were seen in 2008, and these 17-year cicadas are biologically programmed to emerge when the soil temperature gets about 64 degrees. That puts us about two weeks off, perhaps three. Like zombies, they’re coming.

Also like zombies, they’ll keep coming. Once they begin to emerge, you’ll have more and more of them pouring out of the earth for a couple of weeks.

Where in New Jersey will it be worst? Here’s what various experts say.

NJ.com points out it’s never an exact science, but several experts say parts of Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, and Mercer will be crawling with them. While it may look at times like the very ground is moving, it’s not. It will just be that disturbing bug carpet we’ve waited on for 17 years.

Cicada mania is a website said to be a reliable source, and it deduces based on past patterns that you should expect the heaviest invasions in Atlantic, Camden, and Ocean counties. Then lighter emergencies in parts of Bergen, Burlington, Cape May, Mercer, and Monmouth counties.

Then we have researchers at the University of Connecticut telling us new batches of Brood 14 cicadas will come out in the Lakehurst area of Ocean County, the Pine Hill area of Camden County, and the Linwood area of Atlantic County.

There’s even an app now that tracks this stuff. The Cicada Safari. Anyone seeing Brood 14 cicadas in the next few weeks can snap a picture and send it to this app along with your exact location, and it helps them track these emergences. It’s a free download from either Google Play or the Apple App Store.

Meanwhile, brace yourself, New Jersey.

One thing I can tell you with certainty, you won’t be hearing me reprise my role of dining on fried cicadas. Kylie Moore and I did that a few years back (not 17 years, a different brood). I do wonder though, if ice cream shops and other eateries may try to cash in on the curiosity and try to ride that cicada-flavored food trend again.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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