Is it possible that’s what I heard when driving thru Princeton, NJ back around 2005? In my rental car driving from Philadelphia to NY I decided to stop and take a look at the town of Princeton. All of a sudden this very loud sound appeared and I thought sure there was something wrong with the rental car.
Pulled into a parking lot and got out and what do you know — it was not the car! But what was it? Clearly it was not equipment of any kind, but I saw no bugs anywhere. There were lots of trees around so perhaps I just could not see bugs. It was early fall, in fact it was the weekend parents were getting their kids enrolled at Princeton.
Anyone have any guess as to what I was hearing? Once I got back on the road heading north the noise stopped abruptly. Crazy! We have a lot of odd things in So Cal, but nothing quite like that noise.
If it was nighttime then you could have been hearing frogs.
The 17-year ones were in the mid-atlantic in May, 2004. If you have your year off by one, yep, that’s what you heard.
Sounds of the cicadas in Princeton, 2004:
http://www.cicadamania.com/audio/
Sound of 17-year cicadas, Illinois, 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqys8lKsu4s
The cicadas were operating in full voice on parents' and students' orientation at Texas Tech University in 1979. I have never heard such a sound. The trees positively shrieked and vibrated. I think it was August.
Might it have been 2004 instead? That summer, I went to visit family in Virginia for a couple weeks and they were all over the place and as loud as they could be. In 2005 I was living in NJ and don’t remember them being as you describe.