Cicadas are emerging — and they’re so loud, people called the sheriff

Merry Turner thought the noise she heard Tuesday from her home in Newberry County, South Carolina, was from construction – the low, deep rumble of machinery toiling nearby.

Meanwhile, Lee Foster, the county sheriff, thought it was from yardwork – maybe a neighbor attacking weeds bright and early.

But the sound didn’t stop. It grew louder.

It climbed to a crescendo Tuesday – an unceasing alarm reverberating through the county. Soon, residents began calling the sheriff’s office and flagging down deputies.

They needed to know: What was that noise?

It was the rise and mating call of the cicadas, Foster and his deputies told them.

The winged insects that spend most of their lives underground are emerging across the country in the spring and summer to molt into their adult forms, which lead to those infamously loud courtship calls. Their brief lives are spent mating – in a manner so noisy that at least a dozen Newberry County residents called the sheriff’s office in alarm this week.

The cicadas’ din in the South Carolina county is a snapshot of what a swath of the U.S. will experience over several weeks this spring and summer, as billions of cicadas, from two different broods, are emerging at the same time – the first time this has happened since 1803, the Washington Post reported. The cicadas in South Carolina are of the Brood XIX variety, which emerge every 13 years across the Midwest and Southeast.

“This is a once-in-a-decade event where you have this many hatched,” Foster told the Post. “Some people say it sounds like a siren. Other people say it sounds like an industrial engine or equipment running.”

Turner, a 39-year-old mom who lives in Prosperity, South Carolina, didn’t think anything of it when she first noticed the roar about three days ago.

“They’re doing construction nearby,” she said. “But it got persistent, and louder and louder.”

She noticed mentions of cicadas on Facebook and looked up the sound. It wasn’t quite right, so she searched for the noise a group of cicadas would make. That one was a match, she said.

On Wednesday, Turner and her family could even hear the cicadas from inside their home. They have to turn the TV volume up high to drown out the pests, she said. When she takes her kids outside, they cover their ears.

“It’s never-ending,” Turner said. “It doesn’t stop.”

Until the cacophony ceases, Turner plans to stay inside and wait out nature. This could mean waiting through June, she said. Her 12-year-old has taken to collecting the insects’ carcasses, while Turner records video of the noise for friends and family – proof that the cicadas’ unending whine is real.

Foster, the sheriff, initially thought the commotion was “somebody running a weed eater.” Then he saw his dog eating an insect shell and spied the cicadas in the nearby bushes.

“They’re not very attractive,” he said of the bugs. “They’ve got red eyes. It’s not one of the prettier insects I’ve ever seen.”

In Foster’s 35 years as sheriff, he’s never experienced the cicadas at this decibel. Usually, he said, they sound like a quartet. Now they sound like “an entire symphony orchestra.”

But Foster has grown used to the unusually loud noise, even coming to appreciate it.

“I just think it sounds like running water,” Foster said. “It’s like a quiet noise. A humming sound. I think it’s kind of soothing.”

Not everyone agrees.

Residents calling the sheriff’s office reported hearing a burglar alarm or some kind of warning siren. Some asked for a deputy to come check out the sound. One person stopped a deputy in a Walmart parking lot.

So on Tuesday, the sheriff’s office decided to lay the questions to rest, posting a message for the county’s roughly 40,000 residents. (The county seems to have “more cicadas than we have people,” Foster joked.)

“We have had several calls about a noise in the air that sounds like a siren, or a whine, or a roar,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook. “The sound is cicadas. Cicadas are a super family of insects that appear each spring. The nymphs have lived underground for 13-17 years and now this time they are hatching. Although to some, the noise is annoying, they pose no danger to humans or pets.”

But to Foster, the noise bodes good fortune.

“It’s just the sounds of nature,” he said, “and the blessings of living in the country.”