Get ready for an invasion of noisy insects.
As many as 1.5 million cicadas are expected to darken the skies after 17 years underground and descend upon North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia sometime this month, according to AccuWeather.
The bugs typically start coming out of the ground when the soil reaches 64 degrees, sometime around mid-May — but they can keep coming until July, the weather service said.
Michael Skvarla, director of the insect identification lab at Pennsylvania State University, said a stretch of cold weather will only delay the inevitable.
“The cold certainly won’t kill the cicadas off,” he said.
While cicadas don’t pose any harm to humans, they can damage plants and trees — and sure are noisy.
Skvarla likened the “demeaning” sound of a cicada swarm to “an insect-sized fleet of jets preparing for lift-off.”
Cicadas are typically underground for 13 or 17 years, but they don’t just hibernate — they eat tree roots and dig tunnels, and keep tabs on what’s happening up above.
When they do surface, they have a short lifespan of about a month, but females leave behind hundreds of eggs — ready for another invasion years from now.