Cicadas In Illinois: If You Haven’t Heard Them Yet, You May Not

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with your hearing, and even if there was, you would probably be able to easily hear the mating song of the male cicadas. These little bugs can hit noise levels as loud as a lawnmower or revving motorcycle, so we're not worried about your hearing.

The worry, if you can actually call it that, is that this historical cicada emergence, the likes of which we haven't seen since Thomas Jefferson was president and Illinois wasn't even a state yet, might not be all it's been advertised to be...at least in some areas of Illinois.

Could it be that not everyone is going to experience "Cicada-geddon 2024?"

Ever Since All The Cicada Hype Started Here In Illinois (and 16 other states), We've Been Getting Ourselves Ready For A Trillion Loud, Amorous Bugs To Make A Hell Of A Racket Right About Now

And that's happening in plenty of places throughout the state of Illinois, as hundreds of YouTube videos and social media posts will prove, but it's also not happening in many spots, too.

Like my neighborhood on Rockford's east side, and my broadcast partner Joe Dredge's neighborhood on Rockford's northwest side.

We've been counting the number of cicadas singing their mating songs to give us an idea of how many are around our house, and at this point on June 5th, that number is two. That's it. The number was actually reduced to one cicada after a bird ate the other one.

On the other hand, one coworker who lives in Pecatonica says that they're so overcrowded with cicadas that you can't go anywhere without hearing a deafening buzz from them.

Here's The Bottom Line: Some Spots In Illinois Just Aren't Going To Have Many Cicadas, Historic Emergence Or Not

That's because of trees and the state of development in and around your neighborhood, according to Jim Louderman, who works as a a collection’s assistant at Chicago’s Field Museum. Louderman told WGNTV.com that people have chopped down trees that cicadas would otherwise call home, so they've lost a food source underground:

If you’re making a subdivision and you cut down all the trees in a two square mile area, cicadas don’t disperse very far. When you cut down the tree that the cicada is living on as a nymph underground, they die.

Also, the more construction that's taken place in your area over the last 17 years will also cut down on the cicada population, since construction removes trees and digs up ground where the cicada spend the majority of their lives. Older neighborhoods should have more cicadas, newer ones will have less. Sometimes, much less.