"They’re back. Seventeen years after a major swarm of bug-eyed cicadas staged one of nature’s weirdest — and loudest — mating rituals, their offspring are preparing to rise in Washington’s suburbs and the Mid-Atlantic."

"Once the ground temperature hits 64 degrees, it’s on. A swarm of cicadas known as Brood II will climb from buried lairs from North Carolina to Connecticut with a very short to-do list: find a mate, make babies and die.

It will be the largest cicada population to arrive in the region since Brood X surfaced in the Washington area, the Northeast and the South in 2004. Brood X is thought by some entomologists to be the biggest of the cicada swarms that follow a 17-year life cycle."

Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post April 9, 2013. [2]