Courtesy of Insects, their way and means of living, R. E. Snodgrass, via Wikimedia Commons
Cicada Tracker
Public radio station WNYC invites families, armchair scientists and lovers of nature to join in a bit of mass science: Track the cicadas that emerge once every 17 years across New Jersey, New York State and the whole Northeast by building homemade sensors and reporting your observations.
Magicicada Brood II will make its 17-year appearance when the ground eight inches down is a steady 64 degrees Fahrenheit/17.8 degrees Celsius. Help predict the arrival by planting a homemade temperature sensor in the ground and reporting your findings back to WNYC. We'll put them on a map and share your observations of this once-in-a-generation discovery with our entire community.
The whole detector costs about $80 in parts and takes about two hours to build. You'll want it in the ground by mid-April, the earliest the cicadas are likely to emerge.
Project Details
- PRINCIPAL SCIENTIST: John Cooley, Research Scientist
- SCIENTIST AFFILIATION: University of Connecticut, Storrs
- DATES: Monday, April 15, 2013 - Saturday, August 31, 2013
- LOCATION: - Eastern United States
- PROJECT TYPE: Fieldwork
- COST: More than $50
- GRADE LEVEL: All Ages
- TIME COMMITMENT: Variable
- HOW TO JOIN:
Contact research scientist and project leader John Cooley, cicada@magicicada.org
See more projects in More than $50, Fieldwork, All Ages.
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2 Comments
Add CommentFor those who live in Maryland, I was 17 the first time I saw these Cicadas, making it slightly easier for me to know when to expect them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow when I turned 34, which was their last appearance, they actually started showing up in Virginia the year before. In June of 2004, there were so many in the air that 295 between DC & Baltimore had them flying between the Trees between North and Southbound sides and on all the jobsites I worked on.
Their next showing should be Summer of 2021 in this area. That would coordinate with the 17 year cycle. There are other types of Locust in this area that have shorter cycles, so don't get confused... There is no mistake when you see THAT many at once...
I grew up in Galveston Texas, and I used to catch cicadas all the time and collect their golden shells that they would shed. That was when I was around 8 years old, which would have been in 1989. So, if 1989 was the 17 year cycle in Texas, then the next one was roughly 2006, and then the next would be 2023. I live near San Diego California now, and haven't seen any cicadas out here. But, when I was on vacation in Costa Rica I saw some insects that look a lot like cicadas, where are called treehoppers. By the way, all my childhood friends in Texas used to call cicadas locusts, and I would always argue with them that they were called cicadas, and that locust look like grasshoppers.
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