Posted on 06/08/2021 11:58:37 AM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
The 17-year “Brood X” cicadas are hatching in such high numbers that they’re being picked up by weather radar in Virginia.
“THIS is not rain, not ground clutter,” NBC meteorologist Lauryn Ricketts tweeted on Monday. “So likely CICADAS being picked up by the radar beam.”
Pallozzi said the NWS has a weather radar located in Sterling, Virginia, in the same region as the radar map that Ricketts posted, and explained that the beams the radar devices send out rise the further they travel from the machine.
So the beams are picking up the newly emerged cicadas on the ground near the Sterling radar, but fewer and fewer cicadas are identified as the beam’s height increases away from the ground, which is why the blip on the map is so close to the radar itself, Pallozzi said.
The NWS’ Baltimore-Washington account tweeted on Saturday that local radar was reporting “a lot of fuzziness” that it attributed to cicadas.
While the cicadas are populous enough for weather radar to notice them, Pallozzi said it’s easy for any meteorologist to discern the difference between weather events and cicadas due to the “Hydrometeor Classification Algorithm.”
Pallozzi said the NWS can use the algorithm to determine the likelihood that a radar beam is picking up hail, rain, snow, something biological, or more.
And cicadas can be really noisy too:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1401920157413482500
After 17 years underground, billions of red-eyed cicadas are beginning to crawl their way to the surface in portions of the United States. The periodical insects, known as Brood X or Brood 10, have begun emerging from the earth in 15 eastern states and Washington, D.C., from Georgia to New York and west to Indiana and Illinois.
“There will be birth. There will be death. There will be romance in the treetops. There will be wicked sex. There will be predators. It’s going to be better than an episode of Game of Thrones…”
I’m 35 miles south of Hburg, in York, and we have an excess of birds this year. Cardinals, robins, bluejays, junckos, crows, hawks, vultures etc... wonder if the cicadas have driven them out to this area?
You would think they would be having a smorgasbord.
Do small birds eat them?
Some do some don’t. Cardinals? Don’t know. But all of the others will eat just about anything.
You should have heard them today. They get quiet when the sun gets high up. Not a sound now.
Still not a one down here in York.
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