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…”
That there is cultural appropriation!
What do I win???
My husband thinks they’re cool, too. I’m over it already.
The cicadas shut right up when it rains. I hope it rains.
I don’t want to hear “tastes like shrimp” anymore. I’d eat my fellow humans before I would eat a cicada.
LOL
Here in N.Ga. they are beginning to wear down.
Three weeks of it was beginning to wear me down.
How about “In some cultures, eating [fill in the blank] is perfectly acceptable”
We’re just getting started.
They were “late” due to soil temps not reaching 64 degrees until recently.
You first.
Someone told me they’re supposed to peak next week, here in MD.
The first three days I thought they were working some
kind of road equipment down the street.
The rain quiets them down a bit.
A good sound for a horror movie and then when it’s over
and you go outside there should be a speaker continuing
it into your reality...
It’s odd too, they never seem to be on my property
but just north of here.
They are out in force in Baltimore. I hate them. You can’t even walk outside without some of them trying to land on you. I can hardly wait for this plague to be over with. Then won’t have to deal with it for a good long time again, hopefully.
And Gundog thinks *I* have barbaric tendencies.
:D
Cicada hater!!!
OMG, you’re a potential cannibal *and* my neighbor.
LOLOL
/there’s very little meat on me, btw
;D
You stopped for a light in Baltimore?
Haven’t seen a one in Henderson.
I’ll never think of shrimp in the same way after reading this, and frankly won’t mind if I never taste it again. Glad I live where cicadas aren’t. I was in the Midwest during one of their famous emergences, and the roar from them was so loud that two people standing near one another had to shout over the din in order to carry on a conversation. Unreal...
Today hordes of them are flop-flapping their way from tree to tree in my yard.
The Wood Bees, who see themselves as Guardians Of The Yard, zooming in close to check out and either allow or deny safe passage to any who trespass, seem fairly freaked out right now.
:D
And darn proud of it, too! Deal with THAT!
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