Oklahoma Will Experience a Cicada Apocalypse in 2024

If you haven't heard yet... and let's admit it, why would you have heard about it already... 2024 will be the year of the cicada, and the outlook among cicada-specific fan forums is that Oklahoma will experience a cicada apocalypse this year.

First things first.

What is a cicada?

Commonly referred to in Oklahoma as "locusts," cicadas are the clumsy flying giant insects that give late-summer that signature sound of screaming late in the evenings.

They also leave pupal hulls around all over the place that look like this.

Those shockingly large larvae emerge from their shell looking like this.

Surely you're caught up on what is what, right?

These things often end up in my garage, upside down, making all sorts of clicky-screamy noises while I try to get them on their way back out the door.

While they're mating calls are somewhat charming in the setting of an evening on the lake, when they're loud enough to hear them over the TV inside, it gets old really quick.

While we manage to live through this first-world problem in most years, 2024 is going to double down in what experts are calling the cicada apocalypse.

These creatures live most of their life underground. They chew through the earth for years and decades until it's time for them to emerge and breed. As annoying as they can be, most years only see one "brood" of cicadas mature to this point.

In 2024, two different broods will mature and come out at the same time. One mostly northern species in the upper midwest, the other across most of the south. As summer goes on, they will effectively double the normal population across the swath of America they're so familiar with.

What is the lasting effect?

This is the unknown at this point in time. Even cicada aficionados are curious as to how this will all play out.

They mostly agree the areas that usually see cicada activities will experience any normal season... but along the boundary between these two broods, not only will there be more insects and noticeably more noise, but there's a strong chance these two broods might interbreed, adding to the evolution of a new subspecies that will be discovered years from now.

If you want to read up more about it, or see how wildly unique the cicada world is, click here.