Tag Archives: eastern United States

‘A loud month, for sure’: U.S. awaits huge, 17-year cicada hatch

(Reuters) – For millions of Americans, this May will be an extra noisy month. A once-every-17 year hatch of periodic cicadas is set to occur across parts of the eastern United States – and it is expected to be big.

The hatch of the cicadas, called Brood X, will take place once the warming spring soil reaches a certain temperature. Billions of cicada nymphs, which have been living off tree roots for 17 years, will crawl out of the ground, shed their skin, and start feeding and looking for mates.

It is hard to predict the exact day the hatching will start, but Dr. Jessica Ware, an associate curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, expects it will be sometime around May 13.

“May is going to be a loud month, for sure, for cicadas,” said Ware.

Male cicadas make a loud, chirping sound by vibrating a plate called a tymbal located on their abdomens.

“It’s this kind of dance; males are showing that they can call as loud and as long as possible, which means they’re probably a good mate. Females are listening. Are they calling loud? Are they calling long?… it’s kind of a complicated acoustic dance that they’re doing,” said Ware.

Periodic cicadas are a different species from the annual cicadas that can be heard on most summer nights after dusk. Ware said scientists are not sure exactly why periodic cicadas developed such a long life-cycle, but it probably evolved as a survival mechanism.

Ware said cicadas are harmless, and their hatch provides food for birds, animals and other insects.

“It’s kind of exciting to think about Brood X emerging because the last time these individuals were above ground was in 2004. And so when you think about – a lot’s happened in the last 17 years,” said Ware.

Brood X cicada hatches will occur in the middle part of the Eastern United States, from as far south as Eastern Tennessee, all the way up to southern parts of New York.

(Reporting by Soren Larson; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Heatwave broils eastern, central U.S., utilities poised for demand

Visitors from Chile, Emilia Aguirre, 14, Beatriz Catalan, 14, and Magdalena Chahuan, 15, walk during a hot day in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. July 18, 2019. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert

By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A massive heat wave that has enveloped the U.S. Midwest pushed into the Northeast on Friday, ushering in temperatures that could top 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38°C) in Washington, D.C., and leading utilities to take steps to prevent power outages.

The huge blob of warm air is likely to blanket the region, home to a third of the U.S. population, through Sunday with little overnight relief, said meteorologist David Roth of the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

“There are 124 million people under a heat advisory or excessive heat warning – that’s a third of the population,” Roth said.

As of Friday, the heatwave sprawled from Kansas to the Atlantic Coast, and from South Carolina north to Maine. It was expected to intensify on Saturday and Sunday.

Utilities in the eastern half of the United States expect to have enough resources to meet power demand on Friday but asked consumers to turn down air conditioners to avoid putting stress on the system, which could cause outages.

“I’m very confident,” Consolidated Edison Inc President Tim Cawley said when asked at a press conference in New York, if the utility, which serves New York City, could quickly respond to any outages in the country’s largest city. He said 4,000 employees were poised to work 12-hour shifts over the weekend.

On Saturday, parts of Manhattan lost power for hours, darkening Broadway theaters and closing restaurants and shops in a partial blackout blamed on a faulty piece of equipment.

There were no major outages Friday morning anywhere in the United States, according to the PowerOutage.US website.

Temperatures on Friday were forecast to reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, 97 degrees F in Philadelphia and 91 degrees F in New York, where it would feel more like 110 degrees F with high humidity, Roth said.

The dangers posed by extreme heat and humidity prompted officials to scrap outdoor competitions, including Saturday’s horse races at Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York and Sunday’s New York City Triathlon.

To keep cool during past heat waves, suburban children typically run under lawn sprinklers and city kids frolic in the spray of fire hydrants but the New York City Fire Department warned special spray caps that firehouses hand out should be used to avoid creating a hazard.

“If you open a fire hydrant without these caps, you endanger your neighbors because the water pressure drops and our firefighters are not able to fight fires,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said on social media.

(Additional reporting by Scott DiSavino and Henry Nichols in New York; Editing by Bill Trott and Marguerita Choy)